15 Blade
by DanteBeatrice77
Summary: AU - Two surgeons at Boston Medical Center find their lives intertwined after a patient who needs their help is wheeled through the trauma bay. Rizzles.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So I had fun writing this one. I would like to say, before you proceed, that I am not a doctor and I have not been to medical school, so some things might be erroneous, and those errors are on me. Some medical details have also been, stretched, exaggerated, or removed to expedite the story. Thanks for reading.**

* * *

"8 minutes by ground, Nina, what do we got?" Doctor Jane Rizzoli shouted as she waved her pager in the direction of her trauma nurse. She powerwalked from the radio desk toward the resuscitation room of Boston Medical Center, and as soon as Nina Holiday hung up the phone, she watched the nurse pull up right beside her and keep pace.

"You're early, Doc. Were you nearby?" Nina commented, her flowery scrub top and purple scrub bottoms a juxtaposition to Jane's plain blues. The sallow light of the Trauma Bay and the buffered linoleum whizzed by them in a blur. The swish of Jane's white coat punctuated the few milliseconds of quiet between them each time they passed a room.

"Yeah. Doin' some post-op talkin' with the family of yesterday's TBI," Jane said. She looked forward as they ducked into the resus room.

"Well, EMTs said 45 year-old male in an MVA, falling blood pressure, erratic pulse," Nina listed the information the EMT read off to her on the call. They nodded to the two residents that had just arrived from down the hall. "He's conscious, but fluids were administered because they were delayed on route to the scene. Apparently he's also got trouble breathing."

"Alright," Jane assented, and walked to the sink to scrub her hands thoroughly, right, then left. "We got anybody in the operating theater right now?"

"Nah," Nina answered: their shifts had just begun.

"Good. I gotta feeling I'm going to be in there in… what was the ETA?"

"Four minutes now."

"In four minutes and some change, then," Jane smirked through the statement. Nina rolled her brown eyes. She and the trauma surgeon next to her stepped into protective x-ray gear and disposable aprons, and slowly they began to resemble one another more. Before slapping on gloves and surgical booties, they were wildly opposite: Nina with her dark skin and full lips and Jane with her olive tones and sharp zygomatic arches. Their hair curled, but Jane's flooded down her back in looping waves, and Nina's framed her head in tight ringlets, moving outward instead of downwards. Nina's body curved with softness; Jane's climbed and jutted with her muscled limbs and long bones. One was short, one was tall, but they both turned just as sharply when they heard the whine of the ambulance approach the bay behind them. "I'll have all the info on the board when you get back and I'll make sure to get on those residents for that bloodwork prep."

The doctor pointed to her as she retreated. "You're my lifeline, woman," she said, and Nina laughed. Two EMTs and security personnel appeared once Jane pushed the door open, and the trauma team assembled to hear the report.

Luckily, Nina had covered all the major bases, and Jane looked to her in thanks as they waited for the EMT to finish his explanation of prehospital procedures performed. "Ok, lets get this guy moved," she ordered, with a booming Boston-Italian voice. Nurses, residents, and another physician assisted Dr. Rizzoli and Nurse Holiday as they heaved the immobile man from the gurney to the x-ray table. After the gurney was freed, the paramedic and his team exited the resus room, and that left Jane to get to work.

Nina loved this part, naturally.

With the fluidity of both practice and natural physical prowess, Jane burst into routine. Flourescent lights never made anybody look good, but she somehow caught them in the right way when she slung the stethoscope low in her ears and pressed it to the patient's chest. Others bustled about; there was the shear sound of ripping clothes, the beep of a heart rate monitor, and one of the residents fumbled with the collection needle, juggling it while palpating for the patient's femoral artery. The trauma tech ran back and forth, grabbing samples, cross-checking names on vials of blood against the handwriting on the dry-erase board at the head of the bed. Nina even moved swiftly, inserting an IV for fluids, but she made time to watch Jane.

In the resus room, Jane hunted. On her face was an insatiable need for knowledge, for clues. Her eyebrows slid into the notch at what she heard - skeptical, she listened again: not in panic, not in haste, but fluid, and strong. Her fingers hovered over the chest as her patient groaned, fluttering as though she were playing a few quiet notes on the piano. Exploratory.

Nina smiled to herself, though, when she caught a glimpse of the tender touch to Mr. Rourke's, the patient's, shoulder. It was a touch not for exploration or for inquiry, but for comfort. That was the thing about Jane: she never advertised it, never flaunted it, but her care infused itself with her pursuit so as to leave no discernable difference.

"Alright, Mr. Rourke, I'm gonna need you to answer a few questions for me, can you do that?" the surgeon asked, and when he nodded through a grimace, she smiled at him. "Good. I take it you're in pain?" He nodded again, his fair hair sticking to his forehead by way of sweat. "Where at?"

"My chest," he grimaced, his vocal cords straining against the burst of air his lungs were loath to let go.

"Ok, any tenderness when I touch here?" She inquired as she pressed against his ribcage, and when he nodded, she moved all across his trunk. When he continued to nod, she curled her lip in sober recognition.

"'M I gonna be ok?" asked Mr. Rourke. His arms lay limply at his sides, and a tear escaped one eye.

"I'm gonna try my damndest to make it that way, alright?" when she said that, he closed his eyes in assent. "Those x-rays ready, Lopez?"

"Putting 'em up now, Doc," said the young man she called on, dressed in radiation protection and Boston Red Sox scrubs.

"Good, I'm comin' over," she barked. When she marched toward the x-ray station, her apron flowed at her knees, and all could hear the measured tap of her shoes despite the whir of activity all around.

These moments robbed Nina of her comfort in her heterosexuality and made her curse it in the same breath. If Dr. Jane Rizzoli were to name a time and a place, she would be there – how could you deny the authority of that rough voice and severe gaze? It was a gaze never pointed at her people here in the trauma bay, only at the pieces of the puzzle she had yet to find a place for. In this environment, one not only had to be competent, they had to have a love affair with competence, with excellence, even. Jane was so smitten, and Nina admitted to herself that she might be little bit smitten, too – passion was the cocktail of the ER that all of them drank to some degree.

"Hey, Dr. Chahal," Jane waved a short and stout Indian woman over, pointing to the x-rays of Mr. Rourke's chest and abdomen. "Can you tell me what that is?" She pointed to a large white spot near his lung and heart.

"It looks like something ripped in there. Is that his diaphragm?" Dr. Chahal finished her statement with a question, never having seen something like it in her short few months in her trauma rotation at BMC.

"I'm thinkin' you're right. That's gotta be why he's got so much chest pain. Let's get him to CT and see if we can't figure out exactly what's pushin' on his heart," Jane looked toward Nina as she said it, and the most senior nurse nodded before sending the tech to page radiology. Dr. Chahal moved to help the others prep Mr. Rourke for another gurney, and Dr. Rizzoli approached Nurse Holiday with a question. "You the anesthetic assistant today?"

"Yes ma'am. Heather's out today," the woman replied, clearing the patient's IV for movement.

"Thank god," Jane sighed theatrically, and Nina just shook her head.

"You thinkin' you're gonna have to open him up?"

"It's lookin' that way. We'll take up to CT, but my guess is I'm gonna have to repair a hole in his diaphragm.

Nina winced. "It must be like swallowing knives every time he takes a breath," she commented.

"Yeah, or like a semi rollin' over his heart," Jane offered as she strode away to open the door for her team. Three others wheeled Mr. Rourke out of the resus room and into the radiology department.

* * *

"Yup, that diaphragm's got a nice big tear in it," Jane said, slightly hunched toward the computer monitor that displayed her patient's results. Her hair, now pulled into a ponytail, hung in a few wisps about her cheeks. She ran a hand over the top of her head in thought. "We gotta be lookin' at his colon right there, and possibly his stomach," she pointed at the spot, "nice job, Dr. Chahal."

The new doctor nodded and blushed at the commendation. She, Jane, and another resident stood around the technician for a few silent moments. "So… what's the plan, Dr. Rizzoli?" she asked.

"We're gonna go with laparoscopy," Jane said. She stood tall again, hands crossed in front of her hips. She was thinking. "He'll go to the OR from here. I'll let you know if I find any other tears."

She left the viewing suite and entered the radiology area, and put a hand on Mr. Rourke's shoulder again. "I think I found out why you're in so much pain, Mr. Rourke," she said through a small smile.

"Oh?" was all he managed.

She didn't blame him. "Yeah. From the looks of your CT scan, I'm thinkin' you've ruptured your diaphragm. You know what that is?"

He shook his head no. She continued. "It's a muscle that separates your chest and your gut. It was probably ruptured in the force of the crash. Now, that means that organs that originally stay housed in your abdomen have quite possibly traveled up near your lungs and heart. That could be why you're having so much pain. The diaphragm is also the most important muscle for inhaling. If it's damaged, it would explain why you can't breathe all too well. So our next step is to get you to the operating room and see if I can't get you all stitched up in there, ok?" Jane explained, a softness in her eyes reserved for the hurting.

"Ok," Mr. Rourke choked out, hoarsely.

Two orderlies stood by, and Jane walked up to them – young fresh-out-of-high-school students aspiring to be in her Nike Frees. "Wheel him up to the O.R. as soon as the tech clears him, yeah?"

They both nodded, and Jane thanked them.

"Long time no see, partner," Jane regarded Nina as she walked into the operating theater, hands up from just having sterilized them. As she suited up, the other woman monitored the patient's vitals.

"Never long enough," Nina snarked, and Jane smirked lazily. The laugh that bubbled in her throat never really made it into the atmosphere, and Nina understood.

Jane Rizzoli had entered the zone.

The spoke very little, did Jane, Nina, the residents and the anesthesiologist, except for in truly necessary times of the procedure. Dr. Rizzoli's surgical habits were more than well known at Boston Medical Center and she preferred her contact with other, non-anesthetized humans brief when she wielded her instruments. Her demeanor, rough and warm, outside the theater contradicted this entirely. Out there and on her own time, she thrived on the camaraderie of the trauma bay; she fed off of the energy it injected in her. She laughed loud, argued louder, talked more than any of the other surgeons Nina knew. But, within these particular four walls, she was a Doberman too consumed with her pursuit to be bothered by those around her.

Her hands held a carnal grace in them, an opposite to her blustering personality. She maneuvered the laparoscopes with ease in Mr. Rourke's belly; steel puncturing stark white skin rarely seen by the sun. Her eyes never left the monitor in front of her, it adjusted higher than for most other surgeons on account of her height. The flipped and reverse images on her retinae synapsed along nerves to her brain, and that brain mandated that her hands move along a smooth plane. To those who observed her, her precision seemed too perfect, too un-Jane, to be anything but instinctual.

"There was a bowel perforation. Tiny, but there – that's what was causing his blood pressure instability before he got here. We're gonna need to get him started on some antiobiotics right away. Just gotta pull this last bit of the stomach down, and then we'll suture," she said, finally, after one and a half hours at the table.

It was so much in one statement after long minutes of silence that the other team members nearly jumped at the sound of her voice. She paid it no mind other than a little grin on one side of her mouth, but it was behind her mask and gone as soon as it came. She repaired the diaphragm, had the patient removed to be taken to recovery, and discarded all her surgical garb in the proper bins.

On her way out, Nina threw a smile back at her friend. "Just a day in the life, huh Doc?"


	2. Chapter 2

As much as she had loved Paris, big cities scared Maura Isles. The hustling crowds, the eerie uncalm of late nights, people up doing things they seldom should be doing, it all set her on edge. For every museum and university, there were countless crimes, accidents, and general chaos. She couldn't say that the fear was necessarily a bad thing – it jolted her heart into so many decisions that had shaped her. However, the jolt was never _comfortable._ In moments when given the choice, she often picked academics over people, solitude over socializing.

Yet, here she was, opening the last box in her Boston apartment, two weeks after moving the first one in. Boston, she had learned, was younger than Paris, and more rabid. It was the closest thing to home she supposed she would get, with her parents travelling the globe: her father, the anthropologist currently in Tibet, her mother, the artist showcased in London, Paris, Tokyo. Maura herself had just returned from a trip of sorts and hadn't technically lived in Boston since her graduation from BCU in premed. Even then, she spent her elementary through high school years abroad, at a boarding school in France. So, Boston was as new and as scary as she allowed her new life to be, at least for the time being.

Her apartment sat high above the city, overlooked skyscrapers and Boston Medical Center itself – her new professional home. Both buildings blew her old abode and workplace out of the water. She found it ironic that the box she left for last was the one filled with mementos from the previous twelve months: a coffee pot from Ethiopia with a wide black base and slender black neck, an unopened bottle of cheap wine, and other gifts from patients and families she had seen. She had avoided this box since she had packed it, and now she squatted in front of it, curling some of her honey colored, wavy hair behind her ear. The _swish_ of her black slacks against cardboard punctuated the silence around her; it reminded her how much she really had left behind, and yet how much possibility and opportunity she had returned to.

The squawk of her doorbell nearly threw her when it reverberated off the walls minutes later. She had expected someone, but her sudden reverie left her skittish. She inhaled with gusto and imposed calm, moving the box into the storage closet, placing the coffee pot neatly on the counter and three of her most treasured patient gifts on the kitchen table, on a bookshelf, and on the slim desk in the front hall that had yet to be filled with pictures. She moved with elegance and good posture, hands in pockets, a perfect opposite to the jittery feeling in her gut.

"Mother," she said as she answered the door. The simultaneous crinkle of her eyes in a smile and the stiffening of her spine summed up the intricacy of her emotions regarding her guest.

"My darling Daughter," the refined woman in Prada, ears and wrists shining in the way only diamonds could, offered her own closed-lip smile until she was through the doorway. Then, they embraced, a kiss to each cheek. She lingered longer than Maura was used to, infusing her hug with joy at seeing the younger woman in a way she could not do with her words. "I'm glad you're home, Maura," was what she managed, but Maura felt the affection in the hands on her back.

She fought back tears. She had doubted it, but her mother _had_ missed her. "Me too, and I'm surprised you're in town," she said. Her voice whispered, as it was wont to do whenever she experienced heavy emotion. She pushed all of it away for the moment, however, as the woman now releasing her had taught her to do. They stood on the verge of awkwardness for a few beats. "Would you like some tea?" Maura finally asked.

"Oh yes, that would be wonderful. Then I would like to hear all about your trip. Was Ethiopia just lovely?" Constance Isles asked in return as she smoothed her perfectly styled brown hair. Her hands had aged, and her veins stood out more against the skin in areas it had lost fat. As Maura put the water on, she noted the newer wrinkles on her mother's face. Despite it all, Constance made 65 look positively regal.

"It was. But also not, Mother. I spent a lot of time with the injured and sick," Maura qualified. Her mother, though artistic and grand, often walked through life unaware of the struggles of others.

"I can imagine. Your father boasted about you to his colleagues the whole time you were there. His daughter in Medicins Sans Frontieres, outclassing every over other child of theirs," Constance said through a breathy chuckle of reminiscing, as though it were years, not months ago, that this all occurred.

"Well, I did it to help people. Not for Father's approval, as lovely as it is," Maura smiled as she spoke, a diffusing technique she used in her childhood. She could have written a book on how to speak the truth without ruffling any feathers.

"Of course not. And I commend you for it, Maura. I do wonder, however, why you decided to lease this tiny space rather than buy a home near ours in Beacon Hill," Constance made the air of acquiescence, but moved to gentle criticism.

Maura began to sweat, though she rarely did. "I considered it," she buffered, "but I decided that I'm just not ready for a home quite yet. This apartment is palatial compared to the living quarters Ian and I stayed in. Plus, I'm much closer to the hospital this way; you can even see it from the window there."

"And how is Ian? I did love that man. Are we going to see him again?" Constance asked. She accepted the mug of tea gratefully.

Maura tensed. "He is… doing well. He still has three months on his assignment," she answered, a careful dance around the unsaid truth.

They sat together, mother and daughter, neither saying much for long seconds. Constance decided to break the silence. "You may not be my biological daughter, and it may be many years too late, but I have recently learned to see when you are hurting. Will you tell me about it?"

Floods of memories of emotional neglect rammed against Maura's chest wall – being eleven and sending away for her boarding school brochure, countless times her mother and father missed her birthday to work abroad. Newer memories of infant understanding and conversations that stumbled toward intimacy tempered the tears of sadness threatening to spill. "He… he is going to extend his assignment. When I asked him if he had any intentions of being with me outside of Africa, he said he had a duty to the people there."

"Mmm," Constance nodded, taking a sip. Simply listening was a task she had taken a lifetime to begin to practice, and now she put it to use with her daughter.

"I don't think he and I are the best fit for each other right now," Maura said quietly. At the brink of vulnerability, she turned back. "The work he is doing is important, and he is the best at it. But it is not the life that I want."

Her mother accepted it as a step in their process of learning one another. "I am sorry. I do hope that in my life I can see you happy, Maura."

Perhaps Constance meant well – the genuineness in her tone gave no hints of condescension or malice. But Maura heard the implication; her mother feared she would be alone not just for the time being, but also perhaps for the rest of her life. It dampened her enthusiasm about starting work in the coming days.

"I am excited about starting my life here, Mother. I am not going to let romance be my main concern when I am about to start a new, hopefully more permanent chapter. And I _am_ happy about that," she countered, with grace, and yet, also with bite.

Constance smiled. She saw herself in Maura; maybe her daughter had more in common with she and her husband than she originally thought. "Of course. It is certainly reason to be happy. Are you a teaching surgeon?"

"Yes. And I'm starting on call in the trauma bay. Apparently trauma is where they refine the new hires," Maura said as she sipped her tea.

"Well, they'll be surprised when they encounter your competence, Maura. I'm sure of it," Constance reached out and patted the younger Isles' wrist. Her daughter smiled and blushed despite herself.


	3. Chapter 3

Jane refused to accept the change of the air in the South End, so she roundly ignored the chill on her skin as she strode a few blocks from the hospital and into the town center. She wore only her scrubs and some Nikes with her hair down, even though the gray in the sky called for a sweater or at least an undershirt. She smelled the impending fall chill and dirty asphalt as she crossed the street to a familiar storefront, a couple fold-up chairs and tables out front, fading gold letters against a red awning that read _Maruccio's_ in simple italic scrawl.

When she pulled the door open, the familiar clang of bells chimed in her ear, and she released a strained breath. The aroma of baking bread and olive oil comforted her; it gave her a warmth that she lacked outside – Maruccio's was a little Italian paradise in the surrounding sea of Irish culture and business. She had found it during her residency, and had been coming ever since.

"Dr. Rizzoli!" called a man from the back, knowing her steps before he even approached the front counter. He wiped his hands on the speckled apron that draped over his bloated belly. In a way, they appeared related – olive skin, wavy black hair: his short, hers long. He couldn't have been much older or younger than her 35, and she could certainly relate to the soiled-front look.

"Hey, Mikey," Jane grimaced at the formality he addressed her with. "How many times I gotta say just Jane? I'm a customer, just like anyone else that walks in here." She approached the linoleum counter with her wrists crossed in front of her, regarding Mikey with a tight-lipped grin and then glancing upward at the old Pepsi-board menu posted above the prep counter behind him.

"You know that's a no can do, Doc. You worked too hard on that MD," he chuckled, and pulled out his ticket book. "Besides, I get to tell my little cousins one of us _Siciliani_ made it all the way to BMC. Ain't no way I'm gonna downplay that."

"Yeah well. You're no slouch, either," Jane grumbled, knowing that Mikey, despite his humble looks, owned two other delis and made quite a comfortable living for himself. "Gimme a turkey on wheat, will ya? Hold the mayo, double the mustard."

"You got it. Combo today?" Mikey asked, eyeing the cooler of various bottled water and sodas, drawing her attention to it.

Jane contemplated it for a moment. "Yeah, why not," she said as she fished a ten out of her scrub pocket. "Keep the change."

"Thanks, Jane," said Mikey, brown irises glistening with a serious gratitude. "You know, for all our ribbin', you're like part of the Maruccio family," he stuffed the bill into the cash register after pushing a few buttons, and wondered whether or not she would respond with her back to him and an Aquafina and a bag of sunchips in her left hand.

"Thanks, but you know how hard it is to find Italians around here? I got lucky with you guys, man," she did indeed reply, winking at him, and then she sat in one of the wicker chairs in the tiny dining room.

He brought the sandwich out to her when it was ready, and then left her to continue his duties in the kitchen. This was their routine every time she ate there – she ordered, he cooked, she sat, he left her alone to eat. Very rarely did they converse beyond her initial walk-in.

She unwrapped the white paper around her sub and listened to the city outside. Cars roared by, wind blew flags on the buildings that towered above them, and people chatted as they strolled by the sandwich shop. She took the first bite, rolling her eyes up in taste overload – Mikey's mother provided the recipe for the home-baked Italian rolls, and he personally knew the butcher that supplied all his meats. Fresh onions and lettuce and an oil-vinegar blend topped everything off – in Jane's mind, even her own Ma would struggle to compete.

And as if on cue, the somebody belonging to the shoes that she heard trudge in would probably agree with the sentiment. As soon as Jane saw him, her face lit up with a sort of familiar joy at his tousled suit and cropped, gelled black hair. Black hair exactly like hers. "Frankie? What're you doin' here?" She asked, and he pulled out a chair at her table.

"Hey Janie," He said, smiling. "I'm here 'cause I figured you would be, seein' as I was in the neighborhood."

If Mikey appeared to be related to her, there was no doubt that Frankie was her brother. They mirrored each other as they sat: they spread their legs open, leaned their long backs against the wood of their seats, smirked handsomely at the sight of each other.

"You figured right, Detective. Here I am. What's up?" Jane asked in between chews. She dabbed a napkin to her lips and her one puffed cheek.

"I haven't seen you in awhile, sis," Frankie said, leaning forward and fiddling with his tie.

"Yeah," Jane assented. She offered him the other half of her footlong, the one she was saving for later in her shift.

He waved his hand in dismissal. "I'm treatin' myself today – pastrami on rye. The potato salad, too," the way his brows danced at the mention of his meal made Jane chuckle.

"You sure you should be treatin' yourself? Lookin' a little soft around the edges, there, little brother. No physicals comin' up?"

Frankie feigned offense at her good-natured poking. "You're just jealous that you don't have to be in top physical condition for your job."

"And yet, I still am," she deadpanned.

He shook his head. "Yes, because we all need constant reminding, Janie. But seriously, it's been too long. Ma's lookin' for ya, Pop's askin' when you're comin' around." He scratched the back of his head, a serious and thoughtful look crossing his fuller features.

An incredulous one passed over Jane's facial angles and edges. "I just saw 'em like a week and a half ago!"

"Eh. I know. I think it's just because you've missed the last couple Sunday dinners," Frankie reasoned.

"Yeah, I been on call the past couple Sundays. It's been rough," Jane responded.

"It certainly hasn't been easy has it? You in trauma and me in organized crime. We both know Boston is the real city that never sleeps," he laughed, a whoosh of air jumping from his lungs into the space between them.

"It sure doesn't. How's work goin'?"

"It's good. Budget's tight, you know? So we're all spread a little thin. But that means overtime, and we're closing in on somethin' big."

"Somethin' I'm guessin' you can't discuss," Jane said between crunches of chips.

"Yeah, I can't, not the specifics. But I can tell you it'll be another notch in my belt for that promotion to homicide," Frankie said. "How about you?"

"Busy as hell, but the residents are really pluggin' along. It's a good group this year. I've been patching up a lot of your guys, though," she commented.

"Tensions are on the rise out there, Janie. Doyle's guys opened up on the Italians six months ago and its been nuts ever since."

"I saw that in the paper. Stitchin' up the ones that have enough balls to come in to the ER is fun," Jane said. The din of the fan in the back made their conversation sound clandestine, hidden among conflicting soundwaves.

"I can imagine. It's just amazin' how little our work helps sometimes, you know? Almost like a band-aid over a bullet wound."

"Chasin' the dream never is easy, Frankie. But here we are, both doin' it, both makin' waves," she said as she tapped her bottle cap on the table.

"At least two of us are successful," her brother said, with more than a small amount of sore feeling.

"Hey, Tommy's doin' alright, Frankie. He's got that job down at the docks, livin' on his own, puttin' his stamp on the world. Not everyone's definition of success is our definition," Jane crossed her arms in indignance. She ran her tongue along her front top teeth.

"That's not his only source of income, Jane, and we both know it," Frankie growled.

"Why you bringin' this up now, huh? Course I have my suspicions. And usually my suspicions are right. But I don't have proof, and neither do you. So what do you want us to do, huh? Stage a mob intervention? 'Hey Tommy, thanks for getting clean and finding a job and all, but Frankie and I think you're runnin' around Boston with the mafia. Anything you'd care to share?" her face rose and fell theatrically with her rant.

Frankie's frustration just rose. "He's gonna break Ma's heart, Janie, when this all comes to light. And he respects you."

Jane contemplated letting the guilt trip get to her, but ultimately resisted. "I don't disagree. But I'm gonna break _his_ heart if I bust down his door and end up being totally wrong. In the meantime all I can do is love him, and all you can do is investigate the hell out of him."

Her brother nodded, eyes downcast, fingers intertwined in thought on the tabletop. "Yeah, you're right. Guess I just needed your wisdom, Doc."

She chuckled. "You don't have to be an ass about it, brother." Her brow narrowed when she felt a buzzing at her hip, and she pulled her pager out to check in the incoming message. "I gotta go – patient is about 15 minutes out." She wrapped the other half of her sandwich in its paper coating and bolted up from her seat.

Frankie waved a hand at her. "Of course, of course. Go, sis. I need to eat and get back to work anyway."

She was halfway to the door when she turned back. "Thank you, love you, tell Ma I'll call her soon." With that, she pushed through the door, looked both ways, then jogged out toward the hospital.


	4. Chapter 4

"Dr. Isles? Mr. Ibrahim, your 1:30, is in room 4. I went ahead and took his vitals," a medical assistant, Rachel Forbes, placed a file on the partition between the hallway and the reception desk in the BMC Head and Neck Cancer wing. She wore her hair in a tight, functional ponytail, and her French tips clicked the finish in a sound that Maura had always characterized as professional.

"Thank you, Rachel," the doctor said, her smile tight, but genuine. Her legs, long and lithe in her gray slacks, carried her toward the other woman, who admired her loose burgundy blouse. Two days in and her fashion sense had incited both ire and desire in her colleagues – Rachel happened to fall into the camp of the latter.

"You're probably going to get tired of hearing this, but you look great, Doctor. I know some of the older girls here have been giving you a hard time behind your back, but they're just jealous that you look better in designer clothes than most of us ever could," the young woman said with amiability, "one day I'm gonna ask you for some pointers."

Maura was sobered by the kindness. "Well, thank you," she took the file, making sure to grin a little wider this time. "And I'll look forward to it." She rifled through the notes in the file of her new patient, who had been treated by her predecessor, the now-retired Dr. Paulsen. Word was that he was a surly man, fiery and easily riled, but also charismatic and caring.

It was a lot to live up to for someone who had dealt with social anxiety her whole life. "It says here the general otolaryngologist refused to operate. Did Dr. Paulsen know this, or was this note made after his retirement?" She asked, information her primary barrier against fear.

"He knew," Rachel answered. "He told Mr. Ibrahim that we would take a look and see what we could do. I think the poor guy's at the end of his rope, here, and is just hoping for some kind of help."

"Alright," Maura nodded. "Thanks Rachel," with that, she powerwalked down the hall and to the left. At the fourth door down, the muffled tap of her heels morphed into a powerful clack, and she gave internal thanks for the linoleum that signaled Mr. Ibrahim to her arrival – this left less onus on her words and actions to get the job done.

The man, 75 and showing it, grinned widely at her as she took a seat in the swiveling chair by the operating bed. "You're the new doctor, I presume?"

She returned his smile, and held out her hand. "I am. Dr. Maura Isles, Mr. Ibrahim, nice to meet you." With each patient and each handshake, it got a little easier, a little more fluid.

He took it, and shook with vigor. She noticed his pressed slacks and ironed plaid shirt, and the hat next to him on the bed. It all juxtaposed his tired eyes, puffy nasojugal folds, and sunken cheeks. His hands reminded her of her mothers, but older: all skin and veins with a few added sunspots. "I've gotta say, you're quite the improvement over Dr. Paulsen in the looks department," he chuckled.

As he settled into more comfortable speech, she immediately noted the problem: his voice was hoarse and reedy, much beyond what the voice of a man his age should have been.

"Well, thank you. Now, tell me what it is that brought you to our offices today," she crossed her legs as she processed the notes on his chart.

"My voice… I lost it about a month ago and can't seem to get it back, and my other ENT won't consider any kind of surgery," Mr. Ibrahim explained, more in a croak than in phonation.

"And is that because of the spur on your C2 vertebra?" Maura asked, rising, her white labcoat a contrast to the deep color of her top. It accentuated her authority. She outfitted her hands with blue latex gloves and pulled out a tongue depressor and a laryngeal mirror, as well as a forehead light. When she affixed it to her head and turned it on, she approached the man sitting on her table.

"I… I think so. It looks like a big bump over my voicebox," he answered. He chuckled in insecurity, but she paid it little mind.

"Alright. I'm going to take a look in your oral cavity, ok? I'm just going to use this mirror to view as much as I can," she explained and he nodded. Maura depressed his tongue and reached the mirror to the back of his throat with practice. However, she saw nothing but exactly what he described: a big bump not-so-conveniently covering his vocal cords. "My goodness, that's really occluding our view of the vocal folds, isn't it?" she remarked.

"That's what the other doctor said," Mr. Ibrahim commented. He hung his head.

"Don't get so discouraged just yet," Maura said, moving about the exam room to ready the equipment she needed. "Just because your other physician refused to operate doesn't mean there aren't potential other options, especially if what I suspect is true. Can you do me a favor and relocate to that chair there, please? I would like to get a closer look at your larynx," she pointed to the blue medical chair in a corner of the large room, where a flexible endoscope hung on the wall near it. It looked like a videogame joystick with a cord attached to the end, but always reminded Maura of an anglerfish, the way it narrowed at its tip and lit up into the darkness of the nasal cavity.

"This gonna hurt?" Mr. Ibrahim asked, intending it as a joke but the tremble in his already diplophonic voice belied his worry.

"Not at all. In fact, I am going to spray a numbing agent in your nares and then you won't feel a thing," she assured him.

"That's what I like to hear," said he in his rough voice. He smiled and nodded toward her, and she approached in her chair.

After swabbing his nostrils with the agent, she readied the flexible endoscope. "Perfect. We'll give that five minutes, and then take a look at your vocal folds through your nose with this little light."

"So, Dr. Isles," the man strained to say, "what makes a girl like yourself want to look down old men's throats all day?"

Maura laughed, grateful for his humor meant to put her at ease. "You know what, Mr. Ibrahim? I truly enjoy giving people like you their voice back."

"I'm glad you're here, then," he responded quietly, eyes glassed with newfound respect for the otolaryngologist.

She accepted his comment with grace and quiet. The five minutes passed, and her gloved hands grasped the body of the scope. "Ok, I'm going to feed the flexible endoscope through your nose and see if we can't move past that spur." He took the entrance of the scope in his nostril swimmingly, and Maura watched its descent into his throat. "Ah hah," she breathed, more to herself than to her patient. "It is indeed a hemorrhagic polyp."

"That doesn't sound good," Mr. Ibrahim stuttered, his palms sweating.

"It's not life-threatening. Fortunately, it's not the largest I've seen," Maura explained, not moving her eyes from the screen where his vocal folds were displayed. "I can see why your previous physician refused to operate, and I don't think I could either. But, I can definitely remove it here in the office. It will take a little longer to heal, and you'll be more sore than if I surgically removed it, but it shouldn't be a problem."

"Oh thank God," he said as she removed the scope and her gloves.

"Let me call Rachel in here to assist me and we'll snip the polyp straight away, ok?" Maura asked, walking toward the door. Her patient nodded in acquiescence and she left. The two women returned shortly after, and while Rachel stabilized the scope, Maura used curved scissors to snip the round, blood-filled mass on his vocal cords – bulbous, red, and wet on white muscle fibers. With sure fingers, she symphonied forceps through tissue, mesmerized by the bleeding that usually signaled pathology, metaphor now flipped by the expert curl of her hand – this flowing red represented the first step in his healing.

Her patient, uncomfortable but not in agony, looked at her in gratitude as she had instructed him not to speak. She had him wait for a few minutes for the paperwork to process, and once he made his follow-up appointment, Maura and Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.

"Well, that wasn't such a bad first week, was it, Dr. Isles?" Rachel chuckled, straightening the papers on her desk.

"Definitely not," Maura answered, running a hand through her hair. "I want to thank you for all your help this week-" she began, when she felt a buzz at her hip.

"Is everything alright, Doctor?" Rachel asked. Her eyes scrutinized her superior, who fumbled in her lab coat.

Maura finally found the pager in her left pocket. "Not for someone out there," she clarified, pointing out their window to the trauma wing across the way. "I'm being called in for a trauma consult."

* * *

 **A/N: This is the last chapter before they meet. Thank you for all the follows! Read and review, because I love to hear what you think!**


	5. Chapter 5

"Blunt trauma to the head and neck, headed to the resus room in 10," Nina, now in all burgundy scrubs, scurried toward Jane, cutting her off at the trauma desk. She handed the doctor her notes, and Jane snatched them.

Midafternoon hit the hospital like a category 4 – residents, attendings, nurses, and techs alike sprinted from point A to point B, and the squeak of their sneakers on the linoleum was the hurricane's staccato downpour. Some said most trauma patients arrived in summer, some said it was when the leaves turned, some said when the snow fell. If one asked Nina or Jane, they would say it never really fluctuated. Midday was midday in South Boston no matter the weather: catastrophe did not wait for the meteorology report before striking like thunder.

This enamored Jane Rizzoli.

When her colleagues bumped and herded around her, she fed off of their anxiety, their excitement, their scramble. The cold from her lunchtime walk had dissipated and storming through the wing with authority had replaced it with a sweaty gleam on her skin. "Massive facial trauma?"

"Total. Sounds like the guy was beat with a crowbar. They're having trouble establishing an airway, and tidal volume is slipping," Nina shouted over the din of ringing phones and arguing patient families. The confident look in her eyes hadn't left since their successful repair of Mr. O'Rourke's ruptured diaphragm, but her face was much more solemn.

Jane picked up on it. "They last called in five minutes ago?" she asked as she scrubbed vigorously at her hands. The fervor in her routine was merely that – routine, an excellence ingrained.

"Yeah, coming in from the North End," Nina replied. She shook the dry erase marker in her hand with the intent to draw out all the residual ink. It was when she finally uncapped it that Jane spoke again.

"Send him straight to the OR. I guarantee you if his breathing's as bad as your notes say, it's not going to get any better," Doctor Rizzoli said. Nina stood stock still for a heartbeat, two.

"You sure?" as soon as she asked, the nurse knew she'd just wasted seconds of their time: Jane never instructed her to do something that she needn't really do.

"Positive," the surgeon answered, brow curled and mouth in a flat line below her nose.

"Alright. I'll page EMS, tell them to go straight there," Nina said. She ran back the way they came, reabsorbing into the indeterminate hustle, her natural hair the only thing Jane could view as she looked back in the direction of the radio desk.

Not soon after, Jane bolted that way herself, hearing the scream of the siren. She took morbid comfort in its call – it reminded her of the agony within the wagon, lest she, in the haze of adrenaline, forget that she treated real people in real distress. She pulled up short in front Nina and the other trauma nurses near the phones: Two EMTs entering from the back bay tried desperately to bag valve resuscitate her patient as they shouted for a clear pathway through the hall.

The OR loomed still about a 30 second trek away, and the chest rise and fall of the man on the gurney slowed down with each millisecond: not good. Beyond not good – life-ending. Her eyes moved up to the mangled mess that used to be the man's face, the giant purple hematoma that used to be his neck, and made a lightening decision. "NINA!" her voice bellowed, and the nurse ceased every movement. "Page the ENT on call, NOW."

"Got it. Paging Dr. Isles now," said the head trauma nurse, sending the page with a cold shiver running down her spine. Jane locked eyes with her one last time, and as with every trying case, they infused each other with a shot of strength before the shit really hit the fan.

Apparently, that shit had reached its destination, because the chaos of the ER buzzed into oblivion for Jane when the bag valve malfunctioned right in the EMTs hand. The gurney was headed full speed in her direction with a functionally flatlining patient, so she readied her muscles for action.

* * *

Maura had just burst into the ER's swinging doors when she felt the excitement of Ethiopia for the first time since returning. Her heels, cacophonous in their trot down the halls, stuttered to a halt when she saw the gurney of the patient she presumed she was to consult on: nurses crowded it, guiding it toward the operating room, and EMTs raced behind, struggling to keep up and shout their particulars to the staff.

The most invigorating sight, however, was not the crowd around the gurney but the woman straddling the man atop it. Maura could see that even on bended knee, that woman would eclipse her if they stood side to side, easily by four inches, maybe five. She pumped at the man's chest, his blood covering her gloves, and Maura only saw her back, but that was enough. The broad shoulders cocked backwards; Dr. Isles watched life ripple from tricep to palmaris longus, then the intertwined fingers fired: repeatedly, and with fierce intention.

The bed and surgeon soon disappeared behind the operating room threshold, however, and Maura shook off her reverie. She made a sharp left turn into the wash room, changed into her scrubs and more sensible shoes, sanitized herself, and pushed her way through into the theater. The surgeon she had seen straddling their patient had since moved; she now stood to the patient's side holding a pair of spreaders. Nina, the nurse she had met on her first day by chance, fed a tracheostomy tube into the man's throat. _Ah,_ she thought as she got the first good look at the area of the patient's face and neck, _so this is why I am here._

The surgeon heaved a sigh under her mask as she watched his breathing slowly return to a worrisome, but sustainable rate. Nina tapped her with her hip in solidarity, and Maura took the tiny reprieve as her time to step forward. "Dr. Maura Isles," she introduced herself by turning full on toward the tall woman who had just finished the airway procedure. "I'm the otolaryngologist on call."

"Well shit. You're certainly younger than Dr. Paulsen. Jane Rizzoli," the surgeon replied, nodding. "I'm the attending right now. This is Nina Holiday, our head trauma nurse."

"We've met," Maura said. Just as Jane was about to say something, she cut her off to continue. "Do you have x-rays of the patient's skull and trachea? I'm concerned about that bruising on his neck."

"Uh, yeah. Walk with me. We stabilized the cervical spine and there are fractures, but nothing devastating, nothing displaced. You've got to see that voicebox, though, right around C2," Jane replied, shaking off the gut feeling of having been disrespected. Surgeons were peculiar people, she had learned. They approached the x-ray results and Maura simply studied them. "Looks like a bomb went off in there."

Maura crooked her neck at the colloquial description of the damage. "I suppose it does," she offered. "I'm going to have to perform an open reduction and internal fixation – Mr. Brannon's thyroid cartilage has suffered catastrophic trauma: I see at least three vertical fractures. Are there any other injuries that take priority? If not, the sooner I can operate, the better."

"Nah," Jane answered, clearing everyone except herself, Maura, Nina, the anesthesiologist, and two other nurses. "The OMS will be here soon for his jaw, but securing the airway is most important: I won't let him work until we do that."

Maura nodded and walked back toward Mr. Brannon, who was still establishing a normal breathing pattern. They simply had to wait until he regained one stable enough to undergo anesthetic. Her fingers hovered just above his bloodied and swollen face. "What happened to him?"

"Met the wrong end o 4. Guy who beat him to a pulp got away; guess cops are chasing him down. Honestly, its probably all a mob thing," said Jane as they reapplied gloves for the new procedure.

"How could you possibly gather that?" Maura asked, incredulous.

"Gather what? That it's a mob thing?" Jane replied back, stopping to look Maura full in the eyes with her own. She smirked, her mouth open in confidence and more than a little amusement.

"Yes, that," Dr. Isles confirmed.

"Well, my brother's a detective in the organized crime department for BPD," Jane answered. "Maybe I have an insider's perspective, but it seemed like the logical leap to me."

"Well, I prefer not to do that," the shorter woman replied, thanking Nina for bringing over the appropriate tools to her side of the operating table.

"Do what?" Jane asked.

"Make leaps."

"Ah. I guess I can get that. But that's all good, Maura. It's why I'm trauma and you're a specialty," Jane offered, not at all in condescension.

Maura blushed. She couldn't have said why if anyone would have asked. She looked back to Mr. Brannon's throat, running a ghost of a palpation over his adam's apple, now deformed and swollen. Her eyes glanced at his stoma for the briefest of seconds. "Your tracheotomy is inspired. I look forward to working with you today, Dr. Rizzoli."

"Please. It's Jane."

* * *

"Dr. Rizzoli, would you hand me that oscillating saw?" asked Maura, non-dominant hand holding the thyroid cartilage of Mr. Brannon in place. Jane surveyed her – she moved in music with a blade in her hand: not the flowery twang of strings, nor the bellow of horns, but the drumming tempo and bass of percussion – simple and consistent added up to more than the sum of their parts to create something beautiful.

It was a puzzle to Jane, then, that for all the rhythmic beauty of her cutting, Maura seemed to prefer saws and lasers to the scalpel. The woman's use of 'Dr. Rizzoli' in the face of Jane's preference for her first name was just another piece of evidence for this detachedness; the surname belonged to her, yes, and it sounded professorial and crisp coming out of Maura's mouth, but 'Jane' was more intimate, more searing. In a life rife with little time and much disaster, Jane made genuineness with her colleagues her mission: better to be burned for feeling too much, for being too personal, than to be frozen by no attachments. It became clear, just from the knifework, that she and Maura were opposites in this way.

Not that the fact wasn't something to be celebrated. "Sure," Jane replied to the original question. She handed Maura the saw, and cringed at the burning smell when it sliced through cartilage. She had one weakness in her line of work and it was the smell created by the bone saw. Maura's nose didn't wrinkle, nor did her eyes water or her face grimace.

Jane found this newest contrast between them inexplicable. Enticing.

"You know, laryngeal fracturing is so exceedingly rare that I've only done a handful of these, maybe 3, before now," Maura commented in a voice that denoted talk of the weather.

"This is only the second one I've seen," replied Jane, a little surprised by her colleague's chattiness. But, she would roll with it. "The first Dr. Paulsen did, and boy, it was a mess. First time for both of us, I think. But we got it done. Girl eventually got her voice back." She took over the stabilization process as Maura set out on the laborious task of resetting the vocal folds. "How you think he's gonna do?"

"I really can't guarantee anything until this procedure is over and he regains consciousness," Maura warned, as though guessing would jinx her progress.

"Alright, alright," said Jane, raising her eyebrows since she couldn't raise her hands.

They worked there for two hours: Maura carefully resizing, approximating, stabilizing, Jane arranging, holding, spreading. "I'm going to need the miniplates here, soon, Nina," the ENT said.

"You got it Dr. Isles, handing them to Dr. Rizzoli now," replied Nina, coming up to Jane's left and giving her the tray of tiny instruments that would hold Mr. Brannon's throat together again.

"Thanks, Nina," Jane answered the action with some gratitude and a wink at her associate.

Nina's heart melted and it caused a smirk, dipped in a little bit of bashfulness, to creep onto her mask-covered face. "No problem, Dr. Jane," she said affectionately, with some sarcasm to send it down Jane's gullet with smoothness.

"Yeah, yeah. Dr. Isles, just from lookin' at him, he's going to need a PEG, isn't he?" asked Jane, referring to a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy tube, or a feeding tube placed directly into the stomach through an incision in the abdomen.

Maura took one miniplate to lay across the thyroid cartilage before her answer. "Given the state of his nose, yes."

"Ok, I'll handle that," said Jane, turning to the anesthesiologist. "Hey Miguel, give me another hour or so after she's done with this to put the tube in, yeah?"

Dr. Miguel Concepcion studied the patient's vitals before conceding. "Sure thing, Jane." After a beat, he added, "it's the least I can do since my tribe is gonna crush your sox this weekend."  
"I'm sorry, has anyone cared about the Indians since 2007… when we kicked their ass in the ALCS?" Jane spat back, but Maura spotted humor in her rising cheeks.

If Jane marveled at Maura's precision and surgical grace, Maura marveled at the ease with which she bantered with her coworkers. There had been little of that in her lifetime, let alone in her stint with Doctors Without Borders: basically she formed a close bond with Ian and two other doctors she practiced with. Jane seemed to have a close bond with everyone she encountered.

"Yeah, yeah, Rizzoli. You take that attitude into tonight's game and wake up Sunday after you've been swept," Dr. Concepcion laughed, adjusting his patient's dose and oxygen intake.

"Ok, Miguel, you keep dreamin'," Jane replied, chuckling. Her laugh, accompanied by a small sigh, was wet and full and it crescendoed at the end. Maura felt the parabola swing in her gut, and she found herself _wanting_ to be a part of it. _Curious._

"Alright, we can begin to approximate the muscles, now, Dr. Rizzoli," she said, laying her tools down after having screwed the final plate into place. Her lizard brain flared in a timid possessiveness when she spoke, and her more developed cortex formed the primitive _I would like you to speak to me now_ as a reasonable request from the primary surgeon to an assisting one.

Jane assented beautifully, turning to Maura, showing her the entirety of her front. "Perfect," was her only response, and once the muscles of the larynx had been placed, she smiled at the otolaryngologist, who had headed the surgery of nearly four hours. "You know what, Maura? I can close." She offered after a few minutes, and Maura looked to her in disbelief.

"Absolutely not. I'm seeing this all the way through," Dr. Isles insisted, and Jane shook her head with a soft laugh.

"Alright," Dr. Rizzoli acquiesced easily enough. They finished the sutures over Mr. Brannon's voicebox, and then she walked down toward his midsection. When Maura moved to follow, she held up her hand. "Uh uh. I got this. You've been in here for…" she stopped to glance at the clock, "almost four and a half hours now. Call it a day."

"So have you," Maura countered, secretly pleased with the feeling in her chest at someone showing her kindness.

"Yeah, but I was only assisting. You're the real MVP," Jane said. Nina laughed quietly in the background, and Maura wanted desperately to understand. "Plus, how many of these have we done, Nina? Hundreds?"

"Hundreds," said the head trauma nurse. She was already preparing the PEG tube and the necessary tools for the procedure.

"See? It'll take me twenty minutes. Tops," Jane smiled. Maura knew that it was meant to charm her into leaving.

But, she did it anyway. "Alright. Well, thank you for all your help today, Dr. Rizzoli. It was a pleasure working with you, as I knew it would be," she said over her shoulder on her way out.

Jane's cheeks colored pink. "It's Jane."


	6. Chapter 6

"So how do you like Dr. Isles, friend?" Nina Holiday asked Jane Rizzoli. Her eyes held a certain droop of tiredness, but they also lit up with something else. The two women washed their hands and unfurled their hair from their scrub caps, and Jane laughed.

"She seems… professional," she said. "A little uptight, but she's new, ya know? I'd be clammed up if I didn't know anybody either. Her work is _insane_ though. Did you see that internal fixation? I mean," she whistled at the end of her statement, and Nina smirked.

"Keep it in ya pants, Dr. Rizzoli," the shorter woman giggled.

"Hey oh hey," Jane warned.

"So you don't think she's pretty?" Nina prodded some more. She turned toward the hand dryer to hide her smirk.

"I don't know if you noticed, but we were all covered from head to toe in gear for our little pow-wow in there," Jane reasoned, shaking out her shoulders and waiting for her head nurse to get one last glance in the mirror before they headed out together.

"I guess you wouldn't have been able to see her. Oh well," Nina shrugged.

"And why are you stirring the pot? Especially the pot that doesn't really exist?" the doctor demanded with some side-eye and a perturbed smile. In the time that it took them to do their best to save Mr. Brannon, she noticed, an eerie calm had befallen the emergency room of Boston Medical Center.

"My shift's almost up," Nina offered simply. "And hey, we deal with death and dying all day. Can't a girl have some fun?"

"Does it have to be at my expense?" Jane mock-whined.

"It does when you're so… judicious about your love life. I been tryna to set you up with every male AND female surgeon that comes in here to no avail! I just want to see you happy," Nina said as she made a show of batting her eyelashes and grinning theatrically.

Jane rolled her eyes. "I'm going to the call room. Don't talk to me until tomorrow."

Nina cackled all the way back to her station.

* * *

Dr. Rizzoli turned into the call room, complete with two cots, a sofa, three vending machines, and a table, at which sat Dr. Maura Isles, the hero surgeon of the day. Jane slumped into a chair across from the other woman, and sighed with relief to be off her aching feet. Her face lit up with the delayed realization that she had just recognized Maura by her eyes alone – green and brown swirled together like a gem. "Hey," she breathed out, "you cleaned up."

Indeed Maura had. She wore her gray work pants and loose-fitting burgundy blouse, and her watch dangled down her wrist as she worried at her forehead with her hand. She wore her white doctor's coat, and her heels had replaced her operating room clogs.

Jane cared about none of that, though, not when she lost herself in studying Maura's face: sharp cupid's bow, full, but not plump, lips, thin and long nose. "You Italian?" she asked, before Dr. Isles could respond to her previous comment.

Maura removed her fingers from her forehead and put down her pen. Her eyes looked lost; a flash of helplessness erupted across her face for a brief second, and then disappeared. "I… I don't know, actually. I was adopted, and my file is closed," she replied. It was the first stutter Jane had heard from her in their now five or so hours of knowing each other.

"Well, shit. I'm sorry. You just look… ya look Italian, like maybe Irish-Italian or somethin'," the trauma surgeon attempted to back track. "I'm sorry, I'm makin' an ass of myself."

"Not at all. For all I know, I may very well be Irish-Italian. My adoptive parents are from Boston. My mother by way of England, however," Maura replied.

"Ah. So your mom's English, huh? How'd she end up here?" Jane leaned forward, crossing her arms and scratching lightly at her elbow.

"Her studies. She has her Ph.D in art history, and she taught here, in the city. And my father taught anthropology at Harvard – it's how they met."

"Ah, so they're humanities people."

"I suppose you're wondering how I ended up in medicine, then. I think they wonder that too, sometimes," Maura said almost in a whisper. She lowered her eyes, embarrassed of herself and of the fact that she had maintained eye contact with the woman across from her for an inordinately long time.

"Not at all," Jane assured her, "I see art in you. How else do you explain the way you wield that scalpel?" she grinned, teeth dazzling and straight.

Maura flushed red. "Th-thank you," she said, desperate to remove the spotlight from herself. "And where does Dr. Rizzoli hail from?"

Jane read right through her suave attempt at redirection, but played along. "From right here. Boston-Italian through and through."

Maura's body believed her, and seemed to quite like the fact. "All your life?"

"All my life," Jane said. At her confirmation, Maura felt warm – Jesus, it must have been a long time since she had intimate human contact. The combination of all of Jane's sharp good looks and her investment in learning about Maura's life proved an embarrassingly potent cocktail, and Maura wanted much to explore this woman.

"Are there other doctors in your family? What made you choose medicine?" the ENT found herself pressing, but Jane seemed more than accommodating.

"Nah, my dad's a plumber, and so was his dad. My ma's a homemaker, and so was hers. Her dad was a ironworker. I got two brothers," she began.

"Ah yes, the one who is a police detective," Maura inserted.

"Yup, That's Frankie. The other one, Tommy, he's got a job at the docks. I guess I like the hands on work of surgery, both general and trauma – and I love differential diagnosis, ya know, hunting for answers in the body, weeding out everything sorta right til you get to what's actually right."

"Well, trauma seems like a perfect marriage of the two, then," Maura called out when the other woman got up to make herself a cup of coffee.

"I'd like to think so," Jane said as she stirred the brew with a straw. Maura had thought her captivating, even dangerous, as she had pumped life into their patient there on the bloody gurney; now she found her handsome in this tired hour between morning and late night rushes. "What about you? Why'd you pick ears, noses, and throats?"

Maura hovered over a precipice for a few beats: to share a piece of her with Jane, or to not? Lying wasn't an option; she'd never been any good at that, but incessant teasing in her younger days made her wary of being open with any part of herself. "It is the most fascinating thing to me, the laryngeal system, and the hearing system: I find it so fascinating that this structure present in so many animals has given language only to us. To lay hands on one of the major things that allows us to communicate with each other is the only way I can imagine spending my life."

Jane walked back to the table and sat next to Maura this time, instead of across from her. "Sounds like a good reason to me. You want some coffee?"

Maura blushed at Jane's closeness to her – the brunette, however, seemed unfazed despite the fact that they breathed each other's air. "No, thank you. Caffeine is not very good for vocal hygiene," said the ENT. She refrained from commenting on Jane's already rough vocal quality.

"That doesn't surprise me. Anything fun is no good for you," Jane snarked and sipped from her cup.

"I suppose not."

"Listen, Maura. I'm gonna head out because my shift is over," said the trauma surgeon. She rose, and grabbed her coffee when she noticed the crestfallen look on her counterpart's face. She stopped then, turning with a slightly what-the-hell look in her eyes. "You, uh, you like sports?"

"I'm sorry?" Maura asked, confused.

"Do you like to play sports? Or watch 'em?" Jane clarified.

"Oh! I do. You know, I once attended the French Open; it was amazing. I also used to fence competitively in high school," Dr. Isles answered, lighting up immediately. Her smile strummed on Jane's heart.

Not enough to stop the gentle ribbing to ensue, however. "I mean, low-brow sports, like us peons play. Baseball, basketball, stuff like that?"

"Oh, no, I'm afraid I don't follow either of those," Maura said, tempering her voice, guarding herself again.

"Well, Miguel and I and some other people get together and play basketball on Saturdays at 3, back here behind the ER. You wanna come check it out?"

"This Saturday, as in tomorrow?"

"Yeah. It's just a way for us to de-stress, hang out, and exercise all in one go. Considering our time is pretty budgeted."

"Oh, I don't know, I've never really played before; I don't think it would be a good idea…"

"Just think about it, huh? I'm not gonna pressure you or anything. But it is a fun time."

"Alright, I will think about it," Maura acquiesced.

"Alright, maybe I'll see you there, then," Jane waved with her free hand as she exited the call room.

* * *

Maura cursed her decision the whole way to BMC. Now that she had crossed the street and entered into the hospital grounds, she shook in her hands. While that was nothing a good stuff into her North Face pockets wouldn't fix, her hammering heart refused to listen to any positive self-talk she doled out. The mid-fall day was crisp, cold, but sunny. Perfect sporting weather in New England – yet it didn't erase the fact that she had only seen a basketball game one time, let alone ever played it. She watched her warm breath writhe in front of her as she walked, but when she caught sight of her colleagues on the blacktop, it stopped.

She had felt out place as soon as she had decided to join them, but now she _looked_ out of place. What did one even wear to play basketball, anyway? An exercise longsleeve tee and some yoga pants had been her best guess, clearly a dead wrong one. There were three women playing: Nina, Jane, and someone else she didn't know, and all of them wore gym shorts. The men did, too, including the two medical assistants from the head and neck cancer center.

There were shuffles, grunts, and sweat spots on the asphalt. Watching people do this up close was much more… exhilarating than the time she had watched it on television. Granted, then it had been to appease Ian, but now she was so much more invested. Charles and Daniel, her own medical assistants, seemed fast, but played with blunt force: they blocked with their bodies, swiped with paw-like hands at the ball in their opponents' grip.

She watched Dr. Concepcion, the anesthesiologist of her last surgery, lumber across the key, the position perfect for his large body and slow feet. It maximized his power and minimized his vulnerability. He stood there at the moment Maura stepped through the gate and onto the blacktop, and he had swatted a few balls from the players on Jane and Nina's team. Their biggest man came in at six inches shorter than Miguel, too short to attack the rim, and was beaten several times there. Maura marveled at the forwardness of their play – was it the game's purpose to send the two tallest males out there to bludgeon each other?

She folded her arms over her chest, distinctly aware of her presence as the solitary spectator, but anxious to see how the gladiatorial match would end. Their wheezing and shoving was her main focus, until she saw Dr. Bhattacharya, Jane's teammate and Miguel's opponent, back off – she followed him, saw his bearish hands latch onto the ball that Nina passed him. It was a curious and seemingly cowardly move, a retreat, until Jane herself flashed by, sneaking into the corner near the three point line in the flurry of the activity. She smelled of sweat and a cucumber scented deodorant, and Maura's head followed the intoxicating combination. It was mere chance that Dr. Isles then witnessed one of the most beautiful instances of movement in her adult life; how foolish she had been to give all her attention to the men clumsily parading their masculinity in the key: Jane and Nina had set this up from the beginning. While Dr. Bhattacharya pulled up to shoot, Dr. Concepcion followed with a smile spread far across his face.

It was not to last, however, because as soon as Miguel lunged forward to block a shot, Dr. Bhattacharya flashed a pass to Jane in the corner. Maura had never seen speed and power explode in the way that it did at Jane's feet. She attacked the rim, driving her body toward it with what Maura could only describe as stealthy ferocity: her muscles contorted under her tank top, teasing toned olive skin under its Boston green. Dr. Concepcion shouted something obscene; Charles thrust his hand toward the rising ball, but Jane, already off of her feet and in the air, windmilled her arms to the left and flicked the ball in, yelping when that hand came down and struck her full on the nose.

"Fuck!" She shouted, her voice the deepest Maura had heard it. The other players stopped, quiet even though the game had been won.

"Oh my god, are you all right, Dr. Rizzoli?" Charles asked, looking to his wrist and seeing blood. The others then all chimed in similar sentiments.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," said Jane, as though she'd very suddenly caught a cold. Her hand covered her nose and mouth, and she walked away from the small crowd.

Maura, however, had witnessed the smack full on, as Jane had been her focus. The trauma surgeon would not have been fine from a blow at that angle and velocity. "Jane! Jane," she said as she trotted over, both to greet her and alert her to her presence.

"You came!" Jane replied, her sentiment received, but her voice a little labored. "And hell, you used my first name. You that worried? I'm ok."

"Let me look at it, please," Maura insisted, her hand on Jane's wrist.

"I said I'm fine, Maura," Jane protested, but after a severe stare sent her way, she dropped her hand. That hand trickled blood onto the ground from the sheer amount that had pooled in it. Blood also ran down her lip and into her mouth, and her colleagues stood by in worry and some amazement at the scene unfolding. She spit some out close to Maura's brand new work out shoes.

"Are you finished?" Maura asked. Jane looked at her incredulously, but eventually nodded. "Hairline fracture," she eventually assessed, with her fingers on each side of Jane's long and thin Italian nose.

"Pop it out, will ya?" Jane asked, and it was Maura's turn to look incredulous. "What? What did I say?"

"There is a hospital literally 100 feet behind you. Wouldn't it be best to make full use of the finest medical care available on the eastern seaboard?" Dr. Isles replied.

"I wanna keep playin'. Plus, you're a nose surgeon for chrissakes! Aren't you the person I should be seein'?" Jane bellowed. Maura rolled her eyes at the statement, and swore she heard Nina giggle in the group of bodies not too far away.

"You alright, Jane?" the nurse called out, making sure to keep all their coworkers at bay, lest they invade the two surgeons' space.

"Yeah I'm good, Nina," Jane called back behind her shoulder. "Would you just fix it, Maura?"

"Alright, alright, but you're going to feel a little discomfort," Maura acquiesced. With a _pop_ , she shifted Dr. Rizzoli's nose back into its proper place.

"Ouch, Jesus! A little?" Jane whined, and Maura guessed it was more for show than for real.

"It's finished. As soon as you're done here you'll need to ice it or tomorrow you'll look like Mike Tyson," she replied, following Jane a bit as the other woman walked toward her gym bag to get a towel for the blood on her face.

"Oh, so I see you're not totally ignorant of our more plebian games," Jane said, and when Maura looked at her with bite again, she decided to tone it down. She wiped her face, washed down and rinsed with her water bottle, and beckoned Maura back over to the court. "So, Christina's gotta go. She's gotta start her shift soon. This means that my team has a vacancy."

Maura nodded, unsure why she was being told all of this.

Jane waited, then continued when she realized she was going to have to learn how to be more blunt even than usual. "So whatta ya say? Wanna play with some winners?" She asked, and tossed the ball to Dr. Isles.

"I'd love to!" Maura answered, taking off her jacket and giving Dr. Rizzoli and Nurse Holiday a girlish grin.

"Guys, this is Maura Isles. She's the new ENT, and she's gonna be ballin' with us today."


	7. Chapter 7

"Good Tuesday morning to ya, Dr. Rizzoli," said a nurse with her hair in a bun and pink scrubs on her stocky frame. The doctor in question towered over her at 5'10" to her 5'2".

"How's it goin', Deb?" Jane answered, tossing her hand up in a wave. She winced at the sunshine pouring in through the window at the end of the hall they met in –three hours with a stabbing victim had her locked away in the OR for most of the morning. Her sight took some adjusting before she reached out and stopped Deb in her tracks. "Hey, sorry, did the social worker come by to check on 142?"

"I believe so. His number was on the board when I went to change out the IV," she responded. Jane nodded to her and waved goodbye as she walked away.

When the surgeon walked into the hallway that housed room 142, the sight of Nina, her trauma nurse, strolling out of it, shocked her. "Hey. What're you doing here?"

"There is a handsome-ass man in there, Jane. He came into the ER after your bowel perforation looking for Mr. Brannon. Says he's police," Nina explained. "I was about to go on lunch, so I told him I'd escort him personally," she finished, shimmying. "I also told him I'd call the surgeon to come meet him, since I knew you were heading up here anyway."

Jane rolled her eyes. "He in there waiting to talk to me?"

"Yup. Turns out our patient's name is indeed NOT Roy Brannon. Guess that's why they had a devil of a time trying to locate him," said the nurse. "I'm going back downstairs to eat my salad – gotta look good for my new man." With a look tossed in the direction of the door and a simper, she headed toward the elevator.

Jane shook her head and entered the room. "Oh god, ew," she said when she saw the policeman inside, someone Nina _definitely_ knew.

"Hey, I'm ya brother, and that's how you greet me?" Frankie complained, his arms out away from his sides, suit jacket folded on his arm. He had already sweated through the armpits of his shirt.

"Sorry, it's just that Nina… you know what? Nevermind," she sputtered. "What did you need?"

"You fix this guy up?" He asked, taking out his memo book. They both surveyed the man in the hospital bed – neck brace to stabilize his cervical spine fractures, tracheostomy that allowed him to breathe, drainage bags on either side of his face from his jaw surgery, and a gastric feeding tube. He was one hell of a mess.

"Me and a team of a few others, yeah. Why?"

"He looks like hell, Janie."

"You bashin' my work, little brother?"

"No! No, I'm just sayin'."

"Yeah, he's in pretty bad shape. We're still not sure if he's gonna make it."

"That's why I'm here," Frankie said. His brown eyes glistened darkly with his determination. The old Rizzoli bulldog remained the same whatever they did – it fed on passion, not a particular occupation. However, something else sobered it in this instance, in Frankie – worry? Fear? Jane couldn't quite place it.

"You're here because we're not sure if he's gonna make it?" she wondered aloud. If she were obtuse, more often than not, she could get him to open up on his own.

"Yeah. You have any percentages or anything? Chances of his survival?"

"Not really. We don't even know what the brain damage will be if he does regain consciousness." She replied, crinkling her brow in interrogation, asking no questions but demanding answers all the same.

"So it could be awhile before I can talk to him. Unfortunately, he's the only one who saw his attacker. We've been askin' around, and we think we know who wanted him dead. But there's no way to prove anything without him talkin," said Frankie, fidgeting, looking anywhere but Jane's face.

"Honestly, even if he does wake up, and even if he isn't cognitively impaired, he might not ever talk again. The guy who beat the shit out of him REALLY beat the shit out of him – his voicebox was all mangled. Why you wanna talk to him so bad? If he's in your neighborhood, I don't see him doing a lot of talkin' anyway."

"Great," Frankie sighed. "If he doesn't make it, I'm gonna have to hand this over to homicide."

"So? Not that I ever want to see a patient die, but if that happens, it'll be a case off your caseload – you've never had a territory problem before. I can see if the surgeon who repaired it is in today, if you'd like to talk to her. She can probably tell you more about the extent of his vocal injuries," offered Jane, her hands crossed in front of her pelvis, white coat sleeves riding up just enough to expose her wrists.

"That'd be great," He said, nodding his head. He turned his back to her and stared out the window to the busy BMC courtyard.

"Ok, give me a minute," Jane replied, stepping out of the room and toward the nurses' desk.

Deb had returned to it to finish some paperwork. "Hey Doc, everything ok?"

"Yeah," Jane answered. "Can you get me Dr. Isles in Head and Neck, though?"

"Of course," Deb consented. She punched a few numbers on the landline, held the receiver up to her ear, then handed it to Dr. Rizzoli. "It's ringing."

Maura Isles, much to her own amazement, stood at the radio center of the trauma bay talking with Nina Holiday, steeped in what must have been her tenth extra-curricular conversation since Saturday's basketball game. She wondered how long it had taken her to get to ten before that day; the breakneck pace would have disoriented her if she didn't find herself enjoying it so much. "I will have to say I'm surprised that Jane plays so well," she said to the other woman who worked on the paperwork for their patient about to transfer to the intensive care floor.

"Why? Girl, have you seen that body? Part of it might be genetics, but Dr. Jane Rizzoli is a specimen because she chooses to be," as the nurse laughed, Maura blushed.

Nina noticed. "Jane and I both played basketball in high school, but she has kept a religious dedication to athletics since then, while I… have not."

"She is very… built," Maura responded, still fifty shades of pink.

"She's _fine_. You can say it, Dr. Isles. It ain't gonna kill you," Nina knew it was a stretch, knowing so little of Maura and assuming so much about her sexuality, but she also knew an appreciation for a body when she saw one, and _dammit_ if Jane wasn't stubborn about her dating life.

"I suppose she is aesthetically pleasing," Maura answered, regaining some semblance of self-control through her detached language.

"You damn right," Nina replied. The phone at her desk rang only one half of a time before she answered. "Trauma and emergency services, this is Nina," said Nurse Holiday, picking up the receiver.

" _Why am I talkin' to you?"_ The voice of Jane Rizzoli filtered through the phone.

"Well speak of the devil," Nina sassed right back. "Who are you supposed to be talking to?"

" _I called Head and Neck for Dr. Isles, and the girl on the other end told me to hang on. Next thing I know, I hear your lovely voice."_

"They must have patched you through because she's standing right here, just finished up a trach. You wanna talk to her?" Nina asked.

 _"Yes please,"_ said Jane in a syrupy tone.

"It's for you," Nina held out the phone for Maura, who took it, but placed it on her shoulder before answering.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"Jane."

"Hello?" Maura said, nearly dropping the receiver before cradling to her ear.

 _"Hey,"_ Jane said right back. Dr. Isles felt her body release some tension at the sound.

It felt sinfully informal, but she said it right back. "Hey. What did you need?"

" _You remember I told you my brother was a cop?"_

"Yes, I do."

" _Well he's here now, in our patient's room, asking questions about when he's gonna be able to talk to him."_

"Oh, well I'm not confident in saying that he'll ever be able to talk again. I don't even know if he's going to live yet."

" _I know. That's what I told him. But I think he'll feel better if he talks to the surgeon that performed the procedure."_

"You want me up there? To talk to your brother about the procedure?" Maura asked, curling the cord around her finger. Her mouth curled up in amusement because Nina performed an exaggerated sigh of disappointment.

" _More about how that procedure doesn't guarantee much of anything,"_ Jane answered.

"Alright, I'll be right up."

" _Thank you. And Maura?"_

"Yes?"

" _FYI, he's bein' weird. I mean, Frankie's weird, but today he's… fidgety. I think there's somethin' he's not saying about our patient, but don't let it bug you."_

"I won't… Tell him I am on my way."

" _Ok."_ Jane confirmed, and then they hung up.

"You're in for a treat, Maura," Nina said, leaning over the counter at the desk on her elbows.

"What do you mean?" The ENT asked, handing her the phone's receiver.

"I mean Jane's brother is almost as handsome as she is. Look at them next to each other and you'll really see the resemblance. Plus, he's got that whole dedicated to his job thing goin' on," Nina said.

"Apparently that's a family trait," Maura said. "Well, I am needed upstairs, so I am going to have to talk to you later."

"Sure thing. Looks like we've got a pretty slow day, so maybe you and I can have lunch," the nurse said offhand as she returned to her work.

Maura tried not to let her face betray the fact that such a comment was a big deal: she quickly turned and waved, careful to hide her visage as she boarded the elevator.

As she rode to the fourth floor, she conjured up an imaginary Frankie. He stood taller than Jane, thin, dark, and serious like her. Despite the fact that she knew he was a detective, she continued to picture him in a beat cop's uniform.

When she exited she could have laughed at her error. He was taller than Jane, but maybe by an inch, and he carried more weight on his frame than she had thought he might, mostly in muscle. His complexion was lighter, too; she was more tan than he. From the moment Maura entered the room, she noted the fidget Jane spoke of. Despite all that, she still marveled at the similarity in their eyes, and in their mannerisms.

"Ah," Jane started as Maura waltzed in and held out her hand to Frankie. "Little Brother, this is my colleague, Dr. Maura Isles. She performed the internal fixation of Mr. Brannon's larynx. Dr. Isles, this is my brother: Detective Frankie Rizzoli."

Maura took his meaty hand and shook it in her own. _Such a contrast to the lithe precision in Jane's fingers._ "Hello, nice to meet you. I understand that you may have some questions for me?"

"Yes, I… actually, I want to know if and when I'll be able to talk to this man about his attack," sputtered Frankie. He blushed and refused to look Jane in the face.

"Well, Detective, I can't say for sure that you will. The procedure that I performed on Mr. Brannon was very invasive: it involved screwing three metal plates into the cartilage of his larynx. I also had to reapproximate his vocal folds, which were disturbed in the attack. This means, that even if he woke up tomorrow, and even if he did not suffer partial or complete vocal fold paralysis, he would still have to wait at least two weeks before we even consider removing the tracheostomy tube. And all of that is predicated on the assumption that he has a enough cognitive ability remaining to communicate with you," Maura explained. She stood tall as she spoke, gesticulating only when necessary, and maintaining eye contact with Frankie throughout. Her outfit of gray pencil skirt and white Givenchy blouse affirmed her authority, and her open toed heels bestowed a certain confidence about her. Jane swallowed harshly at the visual.

As did Frankie. "That's… that's very honest of you, thank you," he said, his voice full of genuine intention.

"You're welcome. I find it best, especially with the authorities, to be as blunt as possible. We've been having trouble locating the family, so you are the first person to come here asking about him, I'm afraid."

"Well, I think my colleagues and I are close to trackin' his family down. We'll do our best to notify them of the situation and refer them here should they have any questions."

"Thanks, Frankie," Jane said with a frown. "The whole situation's just sad, you know? I'll try and call ya if his condition improves or changes," she added, putting a hand to his shoulder as she walked him out. The hand grew stronger, more present when he looked back at Maura, and remained there until he stood at the elevator.

"Thank you for your time, sis. I'll call ya later? Maybe we can catch a game soon," he said. The pressure of her fingers against his shoulder lessened, but didn't leave until the doors opened and he stepped inside.

"Hey Maura, you wanna get coffee sometime?" Jane turned to the other surgeon as soon as her brother left.

"I'm sorry?" Maura said, flabbergasted.

"I just feel like we're gettin' to be friends, ya know, and as such we should probably hang out at some place that isn't this hospital," Jane elaborated. The both of them walked toward the stairs, and they had descended two levels before Maura remembered to say yes.

Four hours later and Jane once again trekked her way through the BMC grounds to make it to Maruccio's. Lunch had come late on this 12 hour shift, and she fantasized about her turkey on wheat as soon as she had gotten the call to meet here. Thus her knee bounced as she waited at the table for Mikey to bring her order, and she glanced at her watch every twenty seconds or so to time the grumbles of her stomach.

"They starvin' you over there at BMC, Dr. Rizzoli?" Mikey asked as he rounded the counter into the miniscule dining area. He placed the tray with her footlong sub in front of her, and chuckled when she immediately began to unwrap it.

"You'd be starvin' too if you had a day old banana and shitty hospital coffee for breakfast, Mikey. Don't get me wrong, Trauma's my passion, but these middle of the week mornin' shifts are killin' me," Jane barked with a smile.

"You mean you don't just do trauma?" He asked, genuinely interested. He often showed enthusiasm about her career, and didn't hesitate to ask her questions.

"Nah, it's sort of a dying field, at least as a specialty. I do general surgery, too," she said around a mouthful of sandwich.

"It's funny, we're not so different sometimes. I gotta have three shops, you know? Can't just have one and make enough money anymore. In that way we're the same," he said. She shrugged as if to say _those're the ropes_ , and he nodded before disappearing again to leave her in peace.

She heard the bell of the door not long after that, and saw her lunch date amble through the entryway. "Tommy," she breathed, standing up to hug him. He obliged, and she felt his hands squeeze the deep muscles of her back in a hello too long coming. She imagined he could feel her doing the same.

"Hey sis, thanks for meetin' me. Glad you still come to this place! How are ya?" He asked, running a hand through his messy, but stylish, brown hair: the only Rizzoli sibling to have anything but black hair and brown eyes. He wore a flannel shirt over some plain jeans and boots, giving the appearance of having just left work.

"I'm great, little brother, just great. Especially now that I get to look at your mug," she laughed, pinching one of his cheeks. Despite the fact that he swatted her hand away, his blue eyes sparkled with amusement. "How about you?"

"I'm… mostly good, Janie. Things've been lookin' up for me lately, but that's what I came to talk to you about. Do you mind if I order a sandwich first, though? I haven't eaten anything since that apple I had for breakfast," Tommy asked, shuffling towards the counter where Mikey had reentered.

"Sure," Jane said simply. She saw it then: the tiredness in his gait, his tense hands and forearms, the bags under his eyes. Something stressed him, and she already hurt for him.

He ordered a hot meatball, his eternal favorite, and joined her with it and a bottle of coke in his hand. They ate in silence for a short while, until Jane could no longer handle it. "So what's up, little brother?" she asked.

Tommy glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Mikey had left earshot. "I'm in a little bit of trouble, Janie."

Her heart sank. "What, like money trouble? You been gamblin' again, Tommy?" She interrogated, fearing that his old demons of addiction had returned.

"No! I haven't been gamblin' alright? Or drinkin'," he nearly shouted, until he remembered his need to be cautious. Jane breathed a sigh of relief, but within moments, tension filled her thorax again. "It's somethin' different… a little more serious."

"What is it, then?" she growled.

"You know that guy you operated on on Friday? Beat all to hell wit 4?"

"Yeah…" Jane said, reserve bleeding through. Then a light bulb went off. "You didn't fuck up that guy Brannon, did you? Was it you that beat the shit out of him?" She whisper-yelled.

"No, it wasn't me," he said, and when he saw tension leave her again, he continued, "but that don't mean it's all good, either. Man, I sorta fucked up," he said. He moved his gaze toward the window behind Jane's head to gather his thoughts.

"Well then what the fuck happened?"

"I sent the wrong guy. I sent the young guy," he stated, opening his eyes wide, hoping she would understand.

"Jesus… you had him pulverized?" Jane said, amazed.

"No. Well, yeah, but the kid was supposed to do a whole lot more than that."

"Christ, Tommy. You ordered a hit? Who the fuck are you?"

"Look, I got the orders, ok? I didn't cook up the idea on my own or some shit. That guy, his name ain't Brannon either, it's Flannery. You remember Victor from the neighborhood? Victor Lasorda? Well Flannery raped his wife and sister while he was gone on some business. All because Flannery knew he was Patriarca affiliated. Then, I guess shit went down with his own people and they wanted him dead, too. That's why the Irish and the Italians put the hit out!" He rose slightly out of his chair and gesticulated at his sister.

She slid back into her own chair. "You know, Tommy, we suspected, but this is the first time you've ever admitted that you're mixed up in this shit. What the hell's this gonna do to Ma?" she asked with a voice more on autopilot than anything else. "And how the hell are you gonna put Frankie in the position to have to arrest you?"

Tommy gulped. "That's the thing. If Flannery somehow lives, then we got way bigger fish to fry than Frankie. That's why I need you to make sure he doesn't-"

"Excuse me?! You askin' me to risk my medical license and my sweet ass freedom to save you from your hit gone wrong? How in the fuck are you even serious right now?!" Jane raised her voice.

Tommy put out his hands as though to tell her to be quiet, and she snarled. "Look Janie, I ain't askin' you to save me, I'm tellin' you so you can help me save the both of us. With Flannery alive, sooner or later, his guys are gonna find out, and they'll know you're my sister. They're gonna come after me, and then they're gonna come after you because they're gonna think you're helpin' me out!"

"They're gonna think that especially if I kill him, Tommy!" Jane retorted.

"No, they won't! They think he's already dead, and they want him dead. They're gonna think we double-crossed them to keep him alive for intel! Who do you think gave him the fake name and ID? I gave it to the kid to plant on the body for when he got rid of it – Brannon's a guy the cops suspect for four murders of our guys AND their guys and ain't no one gonna bat an eye when he's dead. It's the only thing buyin' us time now," Tommy explained.

"The fuck it is, Tommy! Frankie already knows his name ain't Brannon!" cried Jane, panic setting in.

"He does?! Jesus," Tommy sighed. "Well fuck. That means he probably has a beat on me too. Look Janie, I'm gonna figure this out. And I'm gonna keep you safe, ok? I just had to try," he reasoned, running a hand over his suddenly exhausted features.

Jane remained sitting for a few seconds, stunned. "I can't believe you have the balls to ask me what you just asked me," she said finally.

"Look, sis. I didn't wanna involve you in this. I didn't want to involve anyone in this. The guy was supposed to go down. He wasn't supposed to live," Tommy attempted one last time.

"You think that matters? You're mafia and OUR BROTHER is an organized crime cop. You know how fucked up that is?"

"Yeah," he said without much expression.

"Tommy, I gotta get back to work. I don't care what the fuck you have to do, just make this go away," she threatened, and he thought to himself how much she reminded him of his superiors. "And after it all blows over, which it better, think about your life choices. Think about Ma and Pop, and me and Frankie. And then do yourself a favor and get out of this shit," she said, and then left before giving him a chance to respond.

She walked back out into the cool air again, this time with a coat on her shoulders, and pulled out her cell phone. She scrolled to the newest saved contact and pressed the call button.

In two rings, the person on the other line picked up. " _This is Dr. Isles,"_

"Hey Maura. Listen, things have kinda changed on me, and I need some alcohol. Any chance you'd wanna make that coffee a drink instead?"


	8. Chapter 8

When Jane walked through the doors of the head and neck cancer center, she realized how little time she spent outside the hospital proper. Here, the smell of dying tissue and blood did not permeate the air, but she checked herself mentally, remembering that a much more sinister sign of death lurked these halls. She did not know whether or not to count it as a blessing that they were mostly empty at 5:45PM.

As she passed several doors that lead into offices for different types of specialists, she thought of Victor Lasorda: the gentle, taciturn kid from around the corner. His Ma raised him on her own; his dad was absent for much of his childhood, was a drunk, and drove his car into a ditch when Victor was fourteen. For those reasons, she saw him at the dinner table often, as her mother would watch him while his finished up at work. She found it incredibly sad that he and his family had to now endure what they did. The little Victor that she knew had seen more than enough suffering for one lifetime.

She opened the door that housed two otolaryngologists and two head and neck cancer specialists, and threw half of a wave at the receptionist before forcing a smile. "Hey, Dr. Isles around?" she asked the woman who was packing her bag up to leave.

"Let me check, Dr. Rizzoli. She was just in her office finishing up some paperwork; I'll tell her you're here," was the woman's reply before she disappeared around the corner.

"Everything alright?"

The voice, one Jane began to appreciate as warm and comforting, coaxed her out of her reverie. She noted the same outfit from that morning, and decided that she liked white on Maura. "What? Yeah, why?"

"Your trapezii. They're tense. I can see them under your t-shirt," Maura replied. Jane wore a dark navy v-neck tee tucked into light grey suit pants. She topped off the outfit with utilitarian, but still heeled, black boots. It was exceedingly plain; on someone else, maybe even drab. However, the sheer masculinity of its simplicity, combined with the sheer femininity of the way it showcased the Italian's tanned clavicular area, toned stomach, and long legs, ignited the ENT. Objectively speaking, Jane looked… potent. Maura was unsure if she envied it or desired it.

"What if I'm just really in shape, do a lot of shoulder days in the gym?" Jane asked with a shit eating grin that didn't quite reach her eyes. She pulled her blazer on, perhaps to disguise the current topic of their conversation.

"Nice try. While I don't doubt that you do that," Maura said as she looked around them, "head and neck center, remember? You can't exactly hide something like that from someone like me."  
"Meh," was Jane's only reply as they left the offices and walked toward the elevator. "Just family stuff. I'm not gonna burden you."

"Alright," Maura said, just a little thankful. She had a burning desire to know Jane, but the idea that she might say the wrong thing in return petrified her.

They walked to Jane's apartment building, only across the street from BMC, and got in her car. On the phone Maura had said that she still was getting to know Boston again, and thus felt it more appropriate that Jane drive. They approached an Audi A4, maybe eight or so years old, and Maura stopped when Jane cut in front of her on the passenger side. Thinking the other woman merely forgot something or was clearing the seat, she stepped aside. Her cheeks warmed when Jane opened the door and waited for her to sit. "Thank you," she said with a grin that laid bare the effects that Jane's chivalry had on her. Jane merely nodded.

"Anywhere special you wanna go?" she asked Maura, and they both fastened their seatbelts.

"Like I said, I haven't had the chance to refamiliarize myself with Boston yet, so I think whatever you pick will be just fine," Maura responded. She folded her hands on her lap, resisting the urge to worry at her ring instead. Was she stressed? Not particularly. Anxious was a better word. And despite her earlier display in the office, Jane's posture suggested none of that, so she resisted the urge to show her own vulnerabilities.

"We'll go to this hotel in Beacon Hill. Fancy schmancy; you'll like it," Dr. Rizzoli stated as she pulled away and onto the busy street, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other resting on the center console.

"Why do you think I like fancy schmancy things?" Maura asked, feigning offense.

"Well, look at you. You dress in fancy clothes, your parents are cultured professors," Jane said, in no way embarrassed by her assumptions.

"You know, I pictured you as the Italian sports car type," Dr. Isles said, gesturing to the car they were in to make a point. She also refused to tell Jane aloud that she might be a little right.

"I am," the other woman replied, with a closed lipped smile on her features. Something about it struck Maura as sad.

"Why don't you drive one, then? You could more than afford it."

Jane thought about the question as she pulled out onto Union Park Street. Not that she didn't have an answer, but whether she should share it with her new friend before they'd had even one libation. _What the hell_. "When I got this job, I bought my parents a house. My Pop, he hadn't paid his taxes in awhile – because business was so bad and he was barely makin' the house payment every month. Not gonna lie, Maura – I thought about that Gallardo. I thought about it long and hard, days and nights. But I just couldn't do that to them – I couldn't watch them struggle like that while I make the money I do."

"You're a good person, Jane," Maura said, patting the other woman's free hand with her own.

"Well, thanks."

They drove in silence for most of the 30 minute ride to the hotel. "My mother, her family is… independently wealthy. So is my father's, but I have a trust fund. It comes from my mother," Maura stated as they pulled up to the valet, and apparently confession, booth of _The 825._

Jane chuckled softly in response. "Oh you fancy, huh?" she said, but she watched the reference fly over Maura 's head. She handed the valet the keys, shrugged in her black trench coat a few times to get comfortable, and waited for her companion to step out of the car.

"Thank you," Maura said to the man who opened her own door. He couldn't have been more than nineteen, but he gracefully accepted nonetheless.

"Ok, so when you walk in, the bar is on your right," Jane instructed.

Maura shivered at the simultaneous sensation of the other woman's breath so near her ear, and the hand placed protectively on the small of her back. For a minute she thought she missed Ian.

They sat at a booth not too far from the counter, though it was eclipsed in shadows. Thus was the aesthetic of The 825 hotel: dimly-lit, lavishly furnished, and quiet. Maura could see why Jane picked this place to get away; it stood as the total antithesis to the hospital where they both worked. With drinks ordered - Maura with a Cabernet, Jane with a vodka cranberry – they dove into the conversation.

"So, Dr. Jane Rizzoli, what made you pick trauma surgery?" feeling especially bold, Maura asked the first question.

Jane sipped her drink before responding. "Truthfully? I like the time crunch. I like the validation that I can perform under pressure. It's like what I do in general, but on crack, you know? Sometimes literally."

The other woman chuckled. Jane watched her honey hair trickle down her shoulders, the perfect light to the milky dark in her glass. "What about you? I know you said that you like the larynx, but is there a story behind that?"

"Sort of. When I was about seven, before I went to boarding school, my father took us to see his father out at the Cape. We had never gone before; they quarreled a lot. But, my grandfather was dying," she paused at the sympathy in Jane's eyes. She wondered if the trauma surgeon even knew it was there. "When we arrived, he was at the home, on a ventilator. I will always remember him lying on that bed, intubated. I didn't feel sadness; I didn't know him. Mostly, I wanted to know all about that tube that filled his lungs with air."

Jane's eyes opened slightly at the indifference in Maura's tone until she hit the part about the obsession with the ventilator. Part of her winced at the callousness of it all, but most of her could relate. She had quite the affinity for gunshot wounds in her own childhood. "Is that why you don't get a trust fund from the Isles family?"

"Yes," Maura said, impressed that Jane remembered. "My grandfather saw to it that my father didn't receive much money after he died. It didn't matter, however. My father did quite well for himself."

"My Pop's business was goin' pretty good at one time, too. Til I was just out of high school, I think. But he drank, and refinanced the house to make renovations. By the time I finished my residency, he owed too much," Jane elaborated on her story from before.

"Do your parents live here in Boston?" Maura asked, swirling the glass in her hand. She liked when her new friend pulled back her lips after a drink, and she liked it when she ran a hand through her wild black hair.

"Just a few minutes outside. I grew up around the harbor, us being Siclian and all, and seeing as that's where my grandparents lived – we kids spent a lot of time with them. But I think it was better for my parents to not live in the city. More quiet, less stress."

"I see. You seem to be very close to your family. Especially with your brother, Frankie."

"I am. Ugh, I think Nina may be in love with him," Jane said in mock-disgust.

Maura laughed. "I think she might be, too."

"What did she say to you?"

"That you two are very handsome. Which is true. But she also told me I was lucky for getting to go see him this morning."

"Ok, ew. Let's stop talking about this. Yes, I am close to my family. My parents and my brothers," Jane said, shaking her head and diverting the conversation.

"Do you see them often? I know we work odd hours," Maura asked. She ran her finger over the rim of her glass as she waited for another.

Jane had bowed out after one. She wished she hadn't, and she wished she hadn't drove, because the day's events crashed around her again. She visibly darkened. "I saw Tommy today," she offered quietly, picking at the top of her stirrer with her fingernail.

"I take it that didn't go well, by your body language."

Jane shrugged.

"Can I ask you a question?" Maura asked before she could stop it from leaving her mouth.

The other woman nodded. "Go for it."

"Why did you change our coffee arrangement to this? Is it because of your meeting with your brother? You sounded perturbed on the phone."

Jane did contemplate not answering, or possibly deflecting. "Yeah. See, my brother Tommy, he's always… struggled. Be it in school, with friends, or with addictions. He used to gamble and drink, and I think he's stopped, but he's in some different kind of trouble now. I want to help him, but I can't, you know? He's got to learn how to solve his own problems."

"That must be hard," said Maura, reaching out and rubbing Jane's wrist.

"Thanks. And he told me about some really shitty things that happened to this guy we knew from our neighborhood, a guy who'd seen enough shit to last a lifetime. He didn't need anymore. It made me sad that when I got out, I couldn't bring the whole block with me. That probably sounds dumb," Jane said as she threw her glass back to catch an ice cube in her mouth.

"I don't think it sounds dumb. I think it sounds noble," Maura offered. She pushed her half-consumed wine glass out of the way.

"Nah, noble's a stretch," Dr. Rizzoli looked to their glasses and then to Maura.

They then spoke of lighter topics for another hour or so, with the two of them exchanging tales of their operating room experience. "I think it's amazing that you did Doctors Without Borders. I don't think I could." Jane commented after a harrowing story about an anesthetic-less tracheotomy Maura performed on a conscious patient.

"I don't think you could either, but not because you're not capable. You're a more than brilliant surgeon, but you would miss Boston too much."

Jane had to admit that would be true. "Why'd you do it?"

"Because I was young and I wanted to help people. I also wanted to get out of the states and make a name for myself not dependent on my parents' laurels. I wanted to be important and I wanted to take a romantic journey far away."

"Was it not? Is that why you came back?"

"It was, and it wasn't. War zones are eerie, soul-emptying places, Jane. I loved the culture, the vibrancy of the people, and I loved helping in whatever way I could. I came back because something simply told me I was done – that I was no longer a good fit for the program there."

"I can respect that. Did you make any friends?"

"A few," Maura answered in a clipped tone.

The suddenness of it threw Jane for a loop. "Any you still keep in contact with?"

"Not really. I met a man there, Ian, and we've talked once since I've returned. I wanted… he and I want different things, I think. And I am learning to accept that."

"Maybe that's why I'm single," Jane laughed softly, but without humor.

"The hours?" Maura asked.

"The drama," Jane answered. "You done?" when she nodded, Jane got up, and offered Maura her hand. "I'll get the drinks, since it's your first time here." When her friend went to protest, she waved her hand in dismissal and paid the tab at the bar.

The night's chill slithered down the both of their backs when they exited the building. It was the type of air that made Jane feel icy and aware. That awareness allowed her to take notice of the man not far from the valet booth smoking a cigarette, not dressed for work, and yet had been there when they entered as well. She committed his face to memory: long and thin, beard growing uniformly except for a patch under his chin. After the valet handed her the keys, she watched him get into a car and pull up right behind them. She pulled out onto the street, glancing every few moments into the rear view mirror, giving him the benefit of the doubt. But when she began to take the long route to Maura's building, her fears were confirmed.

"Hey Maura," she said, still splitting her time between watching the road and her mirror, committing the license plate to memory.

"Yes, Jane?" was the answer.

"Don't freak out, ok, and don't turn around to look, but I'm pretty sure this guy's followin' us," she stated.

Maura's blood ran cold, but she remained skeptical. "How do you know he's following us?"

"Because I've been watching him since we left the hotel."

"Why is he? Does he want money?" Maura wondered aloud.

"No clue. I'm gonna try and lose him," Jane explained. After a series of late right turns, one shoot of the gap, and three circles of the neighborhood, she did just that.

She ushered the both of them out of the car and into the garage elevator with a quick scan of the area.

Maura had flushed in fear and from the feeling of Jane's full front against her back as they walked briskly and together. She breathed a sigh of relief when they ambled into her hallway and stepped to her door. "What was that?" she asked, looking into brown eyes for answers.

"I don't know," Jane said.

"Jane, are you in trouble?" Maura cut her off, placing a hand on her shoulder.

The other woman accepted the touch as a calming gesture. "No, but I don't know what that was all about. Do me a favor?"

Maura looked at her in confusion, her lips pursing. "What is it?"

"Let me pick you up for work tomorrow. That spooked me; I wanna make sure you're ok."

"Ok… I go in at 9 am tomorrow," Maura said, thankful for the suggestion. After such an ordeal, she felt vulnerable, and Jane's offer made her feel safe.

"Perfect. My first surgery isn't til eleven. Routine gallbladder removal. Pick you up around 8:30?"

Despite it being a few minutes later than she preferred, Maura acquiesced. It would still get them to work in plenty of time. "Of course."

"Ok, Maura. Good night, and I'm sorry that that happened to you," Jane said.

"Don't be silly. It wasn't your fault – try to put it out of your mind for tonight. We have bigger fish to fry tomorrow in the operating room anyway," Maura assured her, and Jane smiled until she closed the door behind her. Then her face fell into a menacing glower – Maura's words reminded her of Tommy's earlier that day, and then it hit her: it was his fault that she and Maura had been followed. He had dragged Maura into his mess.

Jane Rizzoli had a few phone calls to make.


	9. Chapter 9

The tracheotomy, in its existence as a procedure, has been attempted, performed, and perfected by many types of people: emergency medical technicians, otolaryngologists, general surgeons, and anesthesiologists, among others. As practice of the technique skyrocketed, complication rates plummeted – in the present day, those rates never exceed ten percent. There is a percutaneous route, and an open one, both relatively safe, and almost always life-prolonging.

Maura Isles performed an open procedure now. And, while she had seen Jane's work and called it inspired, she had to admit that her own was simply… classic. She cut with care and with skill; she infused personalization with assembly line ease. "Suction," she asked, and surgical technician Rollins obliged. Her scalpel sliced through a thin layer of fat, drawing a trail of blood behind it, blood that obscured her goal. She preferred the concrete colors of pink and yellow here covering the voicebox, for those were the colors of tissue, things that took shape. Blood got everywhere and made a mess of everything. Thus, she banished it, or rather, had Rollins banish it. She forged ahead as soon as the red coast was clear.

Sparing every frivolous movement, she exposed the trachea, bony and waiting. She palpated it, her gloved finger feeling for the sliver of tissue between the third and fourth rings and doing so with force, though not of the excessive kind. With a look of concentration she set her sights on the far wall, not trusting vision to leave touch uncorrupted: she poked and stroked, until she found what she sought. A smirk touched her lips, and when she incised the windpipe and exposed the new airway she was to create, she paused for a millisecond of silence for the life she was altering. This man, thirty-five and with multiple sclerosis, may not ever breathe on his own again. Thus, the stoma needed to be perfect.

So, she redirected the trachea toward the stoma she intended to create, and when she did, she intubated him: she thought it best not to waste too much time dwelling on that which could not be changed. This man would now rely on his family, herself, and his other physicians to help him live the best life that he could, and that included her work on the table. This filled her with a sense of purpose.

She half-expected to feel useless back in the United States, working in a relatively peaceful place with a relatively effective health system, rather than in the war zones she had previously doctored in. She took pride in her work at BMC, knowing that those patients needed her work just as much, needed the work of her and Jane to keep them alive.

Jane, who had indeed escorted her to work that morning, as she remembered fondly. Her sleep had been restless the night before and filled with not-quite nightmares about strange men following her, and strong women protecting her. She had chalked it up to the adrenaline of the night before and to the stress from the work week, but it still soothed her when the other woman appeared at her door.

* * *

 _"Hey. I know you don't drink coffee, so I brought you some decaf tea," Jane said, juggling two cups, a bag of pastries, her car keys, and the day's newspaper under her arm. "And you look great, by the way."_

 _"You're a half hour early," Maura said, stepping aside, clearly not annoyed. "And thank you."_

 _"Yeah well, I thought we could have breakfast, and I figured you'd be ready," the brunette commented. She set her coffee and Maura's tea down on the counter, along with the two croissants, and took her first good look around. She whistled. "Wow. Nice set up you got here."_

 _"I decorated it myself," said Maura, much too chipper for 8 AM. It pleased her friend._

 _"I think I would have guessed that," Jane said, smiling. Then she headed for the dining room table without being shown where it was, and sat in the same seat as Constance had without so much as a flinch. The ENT marveled at her._

 _"Thank you for the tea," she finally said, taking a seat diagonal from her friend, tray with jams, jellies, and butter in her hands. Jane set a pastry in front of her._

 _"No problem," she replied. "Thanks for lettin' me do this. I couldn't really sleep last night after everything."_

 _"Of course." Maura cut her croissant open with one of the knives she had brought over, and was about to curse herself for not handing Jane one first when she caught sight of the trauma surgeon ripping through the bread with her fingers. The act was… authoritative. Comfortable. She watched the fingers curl and pull apart from one another in a strange, violent, graceful dance, and reminded herself that hers were not the only surgeon's digits at the table. Jane moved in a completely different way: while Maura manipulated objects with expertise and elegance, she dominated and oozed physicality. It showed in the way she spread jam, the way she chewed, and from what Maura could recall, the way she operated. She snapped out of her inner trance when she heard the crinkling of paper not too far away. "You still read the newspaper?" was all she could manage._

 _"Yup. Can't convince myself to go paperless just yet. Plus," she explained, grabbing a pen from her dark gray blazer pocket, "I keep up with the Sox this way." Without a second thought or further words she sipped some coffee and circled stats from the box score she deemed most important, no doubt. Maura would not have been able to say for the life of her. Even if she knew anything about baseball, she was too busy feeling a pooling pleasure under her ribs at the intimacy of it all: of the ritual, of the smell of the newspaper in her home, of Jane's minute but increasingly agreeable Boston accent._

 _"You… circle these things every day then?" she asked._

 _"Pretty much. Ya see, I like to keep record of the team's average and number of hits and walks and stuff and compare it to the year before. See how they line up," Jane said as she pointed to the particular stats she had mentioned. "Gives me a way to be close to them when I can't always catch 'em on TV, you know? Especially in the playoffs."_

 _This confirmed Maura's fears and ignited fires she thought would be banked for a long time. Jane had brought routine into her home, shared it with her, allowed her to view it without any stipulation or price. In fact, SHE brought HER the tea. "I can understand that."_

 _They ate the rest of their food and then rose to make the trek to work._

 _"You ready?" Jane asked Maura before they walked out the door._

 _Maura was unsure how to answer but locked the door and walked out toward the elevator nonetheless._

* * *

The memories of the morning occupied her as she washed her hands free from the chemical grime of the operating room. The one thing Maura mourned since becoming a surgeon was the smoothness of those hands: the sheer number of sterilizations a day left no room for optimally soft skin. She did the best she could, moving toward her locker and taking out a bottle of lotion from her bag. Once she lathered a few times and rubbed the excess moisture away, she felt better.

Neuroscience research stated that the brain reveled in routine, so she set about making one at BMC as quickly as possible. This meant changing into her civilian clothes and completing some paperwork in the call room. She considered it a long shot, but if she happened to see Jane there, well so be it. She stripped her scrubs, opting instead for this morning's gray tweed pencil skirt, cream blouse, and teal blazer. She dropped the soiled textiles in a bag specifically marked for the hospital's outsourced healthcare laundry team, and then made her way down the hall toward the call room.

Men and women, physicians and other personnel alike, studied her as she passed: it had always been this way. They would peek from behind their charts or steal a glance as they too walked past, but whenever she worked somewhere for long enough, the scrutinizing would begin. Some of it was harmless enough, actually, most of it was: She had a… _particular_ way of doctoring. She had a dogged commitment to the truth and the irrefutability of the hard evidence, and diagnoses based on these principles took time. In the hospital setting, time was not something that professionals were very willing to part with. At the least, this made her curious and a little confounding, and at the most, it made her infuriating – but she stuck by her method, and thus the stares. She certainly knew how to carve out a name for herself quickly, even if that was only a byproduct.

She finally reached the call room, and sighed when its doorway entered her line of sight. She would spend her lunch here, then return to see some patients at the clinic before her day was done. When she heard a familiar and gruff voice on the sofa, however, she stopped short of walking in. Instead, she listened.

"No. You better take care of it, Tom; I'm about done askin' nicely," Jane growled, on the phone with someone whom Maura assumed was her brother.

Maura swallowed. She couldn't bring herself to walk away, but that was not a promising start to her eavesdropping.

"I don't care what you gotta go through to do it, you just gotta do it. We were just doing our job. We should not be involved in your shit," Dr. Rizzoli's accent crept forward on the phone with Tommy – Maura couldn't tell whether this was to increase the power in her threat, or just her true voice when she didn't have to speak to stuffy doctors.

Jane's shoulders hunched forward when she ran a hand over her face. Maura heard a cacophonous sniff against cupped phalanges, like a cry for help in an abandoned cave. Her stomach dropped at the implication.

"Uh-uh. You don't understand. Me I can handle. But you involved my coworker. My friend, god dammit. Did you know it wasn't just me in that OR, little brother? Because it wasn't just me that put Flannery back together again, and whoever wants this little _situation_ taken care of knows it. No no no, you're not hearing me. She's one of the best surgeons on the eastern seaboard, and if you somehow let this get out of hand enough for her to go down, I will personally… you know what? Just make sure I don't see anyone following me again. And if Maura tells me anyone's following her, I'll cut your nuts off, I swear to God," Jane threatened, rising from her seat before jamming the end button on her phone.

Maura contemplated walking away, she truly did. But the way Jane rallied to her defense, the way she growled her name into the iPhone's receiver, the arcane nature of the conversation, and that New England accent that had now crossed from agreeable to attractive, all churned two states of being within her: arousal and anger. The strength of the pull drew her body in.

"Ah, hey, Maura," Jane said as she turned, startled by Maura's presence. "You hear that whole thing?"

Dr. Isles, with a veneer of detached professionalism, answered. "Don't worry, Dr. Rizzoli, it's not my business and I certainly know how to use discretion. I was going to complete some paperwork here, but I can give you some privacy." She hoped however, that Jane would make her stay.

"Hey, don't do that – you're all flushed. Come in. It's definitely your business, and we got some things to talk about."

* * *

 **A/N: I appreciate all of you who have been reading. Drop a review and let me know what you think!**


	10. Chapter 10

"How was your eleven o' clock?" Maura asked. Since she had taken a seat next to Jane on the call room sofa, nothing had been said. Never had the din of an air conditioning unit proved as ominous; she had to cut through it somehow.

"Routine," Jane answered, pausing for a good while, "listen, Maura. There's somethin' I need to tell you."

"Is it what you didn't want to burden me with before?"

"Yeah. 'Cept it didn't have anything to do with you then. It does now."

"I see."

Jane exhaled. "Ok, so, my brother, Tommy, he's… he's involved with some people. Some not so good people."

Maura's eyes crinkled in confusion. "and what about that has to do with me?"

"Remember Mr. Brannon? The laryngeal ORIF?" Jane asked, her voice low, as another doctor thought about entering before receiving a glare from her.

"Yes. He's still touch and go from this point," Dr. Isles answered.

"Yeah, he is. Well, I guess… I guess my brother had him beat up," said the brunette, waiting for Maura's response.

"Oh my God." It was simple, and it was enough.

"Yeah. Only, I think Tommy intended to have him killed, and the guy they recruited didn't succeed."

"And how does this involve the two of us being followed?"

A sigh. "I guess the guys in Brannon's court thought he was dead, and now they found out that he came through this trauma bay. And they think we tried to help Tommy out, by keeping him alive, so he and his people could extort Brannon. So we're implicated and a threat to them." Jane said severely, as though it hurt her pride to say such things aloud.

"But that's simply not true," Maura reasoned.

"I know that. And I've tried very hard, as you may have heard, to convey that to Tommy. That he needs to right his wrongs. Make sure you and I are protected from all this."

"That's absurd: why haven't you told the police? Your… your brother, Frankie?"

"Frankie knows that Tommy's people are involved, Maura, I guarantee it."

"But you know for a fact that Tommy did it. You could make it all go away," Maura reasoned. She saw Jane stiffen in her periphery and wondered if that last statement should have made it from brain to mouth.

"He's my brother, Maura," Jane said coldly. She looked at her friend, close to her on the sofa, and regretted her tone immediately. "You got siblings?"

"No," said Maura, meekly. "No I do not. I can imagine that this is hard for you."

"Yeah, it is. But, I'm hoping it's something I can handle."

Maura chuckled humorlessly.

"What?" Jane said.

"Nothing, It's just... strange and dangerous men were following us. I should be terrified and take no confidence whatsoever that you can solve the problem. But I am not and I have confidence in you," Maura smiled as she shook her head.

"So… you're not mad? You still want to hang out with me?" Jane inquired with one eye open and teeth bared in anticipation of what response was to come.

"I'm very angry. A week of knowing you and I'm being tailed by some criminal? But, against what I consider my better judgment, yes. I do still want to hang out with you," said Maura. She patted Jane's wrist when the other woman exhaled theatrically. "Just promise me that if this gets out of hand any more than it already has, you will call the police."

Jane nodded seriously. "I promise."

* * *

"Should I be scared that you're choosing the hangout today?" Jane smirked as she approached the trauma desk. Maura sported a chiding look in response, and Nina marveled at the two of them.

"You should not, especially because you went to school at BCU. Public open night at the Observatory is nothing to be afraid of, either," Dr. Isles said before she spun on her heel with an upturned nose toward the head and neck center. She had been called in by Jane to establish a particularly tricky airway, and of course had accomplished it in minutes.

One week had passed since their discussion of Tommy's situation. Jane kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the drama to come to a head, but it hadn't. It had been a quiet week in the trauma bay, and apparently a quiet week in the streets of Boston.

"Y'all going stargazing?" asked Nina, her words pulling Jane from her inspection of the retreating form of the otolaryngologist on call.

"I don't want to hear it, Holiday," Jane barked with no bite.

"Well that's too damn bad, Jane," Nina countered. "I mean, _we_ don't even do those things. And we've been working together since practically day one."

"Maura's fun to hang out with. She's funny and nice and wicked smart," Jane shrugged, sipping on her hospital coffee. Not very good, but she needed the caffeine to get through the next eight hours of her twelve hour shift.

"Yeah, and wicked hot, Larry Bird. Don't think I don't see what's happening."

"What's happening?!" Jane nearly shouted, defensive.

"What's happening is that girl wanna be the only one on your team, CLEARLY," explained the trauma nurse. Jane blinked at her. "And, you're over here gushin' at her internal fixations. I didn't even have to do any work. Y'all did it for me."

"You know, the more time you and I spend together, the less and less I understand you," said Jane before gathering some files to take to her office.

"Wicked hot, Jane," Nina called after her.

"Thanks for noticin', Nina," Dr. Rizzoli countered while she turned her head back and winked.

The hours slithered on, always winding and never speeding when she had something to look forward to. Those files had mocked her since she picked them up: reports needed to be filed and signatures needed to be applied, but damned if that would happen in the next few minutes. Jane had seen about four more people wheeled into trauma after her interesting conversation with Nina. Two gunshot wounds, an MVA, and a TBI - all critical, but approaching stable.

She took pride in what she did, in the work she accomplished. Her father taught her that much; for all his problems with loyalty and duty, he honored a hard day's work. Yet, it was also he who taught her that some things could wait until tomorrow – this paperwork certainly qualified in her mind, so she rose up from her desk, grabbed her trenchcoat and change of clothes, and headed for the locker room.

Once there, she tossed the bag onto the bench in front of her locker, threw off her scrubs, and peered down at her body, clad only in a black bra and some women's boxer briefs. _Wicked hot,_ she thought to herself with a smirk, recalling Nina's words earlier. Her body pleased her, but she was by no means indulgent. She preferred clothes and keeping mum on the topic of sex, like a good catholic: that didn't mean she didn't think she looked good out of them or hated having it. But, with her hang out with Maura at night, at the BCU Observatory, layers were a necessity, and she was thankful.

It was an off day for the ALCS against the Mariners, and she'd agreed to go. Maura had commented that she couldn't watch another baseball game without something fun in between. Jane had balked at the statement, but had to admit that she looked forward to the evening, too: this just meant that she needed to plan her outfit with care and Boston cold in mind. So, she shoved on jeans, thick socks, her favorite black boots, and a dark grey sweater over a t shirt. She shrugged her coat on after that and, with a wave to a few of her stodgier colleagues, boarded the elevator that would take her to the exit.

It surprised her to see Maura Isles, in her brand new Prius, waiting for her just outside the automatic doors. She rolled the passenger window down. "I did my undergrad at BCU, you know. I figured I can at least get us there," she said.

Jane chuckled as she got in. The chill had immediately set in at 7PM, and she watched her breath creep away into the bruised atmosphere after she had settled in her seat. "I should hope so. How'd you know I'd be coming out right now?"

"I didn't," Maura admitted. "You caught me on my way to park. I was going to text you my whereabouts."

"Well, I guess we have perfect timing then," said Jane.

They eased into a conversation revolving around swallowing work and the debate about otolaryngologists working with the esophagus until they pulled up to the campus and parked near the astronomy building.

"I managed to procure tickets from an old friend who works in the department now," Maura said as they walked toward the building together. A few students brushed past them here or there, but most were either gone home, in class, or at the library. The sight of their old haunts infused the both of them with the nostalgia of the newness of higher learning, of learning for learning's sake, without needing to apply it to a life skill. Lights illuminated the winding pathway to the doors of the building, and something about the evening's crisp called to Jane's heart.

She studied Maura then, when they entered the doors and her Prada heels clacked against the buffered tile. Poster printouts of stars adorned the walls, work done by students past and present, and Jane thought it fitting that among them all, Maura shone brightest with her gold bangle and earrings against the black of her coat. She resembled each poster, a smattering of explosive light on the milky expanse of space, with one key exception: the void in those photos expanded forever, remained shapeless and nameless and quite simply unknowable. Maura, however, was all those things in the silhouette of a woman, all of those things mapped onto the curvy ebb and flow of flesh. _Wicked hot_ , she gulped.

"Jane?" a honey voice called, snapping her back into the present.

"Huh?" she called out in the empty hall of classrooms and labs, just a few steps behind Maura.

"The stairway to the observatory is here," Maura said, pointing a delicate finger toward a door that simply stated: Roof.

Jane nodded, too busy compartmentalizing a brand new sort of feeling to respond with words. They climbed the stairs up and walked out on the roof of the building. It certainly had been awhile since the trauma surgeon had seen her city this way.

Maura, however, had never seen the skyline quite like this. "My goodness," she gulped, steadying herself by threading her arm through Jane's. The jolt of cold air caused it to seem natural to the both of them. She handed an attendant their tickets; he directed them to a telescope, and they sat on the fold out chairs provided. "I wonder if the night is clear enough for us to view Fomalhaut," she whispered as she took the tool in her hands.

"I'd be fine just seein' the city like this for a few hours," Jane replied, whistling at the clarity with which she saw the skyscrapers. "Good choice, Maura."

"You and I both like science, as much as I think you are loath to admit it," Dr. Isles said smugly when Jane tried to protest. "So it was a natural choice."

"Well, whatever the motivation is, we're here now. That's what counts, right?" Dr. Rizzoli asked, and Maura nodded, pulling her down by the sleeve into the seat next to her own.

They watched the sky for longer than most of the other patrons that night.

* * *

Jane thought about that night amongst constellations often in the two weeks since it had happened. A wall had been torn down by it: Maura trusted her, wanted to be around her, despite the newness of their connection. She would not deny the power that such a fact produced in her: her shoulders cocked back a little further as she pushed through the halls, her hand was faster, surer, in the operating theater.

In the twenty-one days since their talk in the call room, they had seen each other outside of work for seventeen of them. Maura had convinced her to take up running as her partner on the weekend mornings, despite Jane's insistence that she used basketball for cardio, and Jane had been to Maura's place with pre-work coffee and tea more times than she cared to admit.

She would not deny to herself that she found Maura attractive. She _would_ deny the hell out of it if Nina or anyone else asked, though. Being a private person, it came with the territory. However, being the object of Jane Rizzoli's attraction, however infant, also meant being the object of her protection and loyalty. This was why, at 6PM, Jane left her office to drive by Maura's apartment. Three weeks of silence on the part of Tommy and his world of crooks did not mean that at any moment, everything couldn't go haywire. So, until she heard the personal ok, with proof, from her brother, making sure Maura was safe was one of her top priorities.

She hopped into her A4 and pulled out onto the main road, intending to stop for only a moment or two to confirm her friend's safety, and then she planned to go home and sleep off the effects of the past week on call. When she pulled up, she saw a man climbing up the steps to open the door with his key, so she hustled behind him to avoid the hassle of the call up. Maura lived in a sprawling condo on the top floor, and despite climbing in the elevator with three other people, Jane was the last to disembark.

The silence of the hallway allowed her ears to be assaulted with the rushing of her blood and the pounding of her heart. This unsettled her. She tiptoed toward Maura's door, listened for any sounds that signaled danger, and then crossed the hall til she reached the end.

Intent on knocking, she suspended her curled knuckles in the air when she saw that the door was already open.

It left a crack of light that spread out from the long entrance hall, and Jane could see that all the lights seemed to be on. Her spirits and stomach plummeted, and when she pushed open the door with her shoulder, she grabbed the walking stick Maura had set out from her travels. She gripped it tight, like a baseball bat, and one by one, stalked through the rooms of the condo, hoping to find nothing amiss.

Instead, she found that the living room and master bedroom were in disarray. It looked like a lazy robbery, but Jane knew it was an orchestrated break in. Hit the rooms in the home that were most comfortable, most lived in – cause psychological damage. As soon as she was certain that no one was in the home, she pulled out her cell phone to dial Maura and prayed.

 _"This is Dr. Isles,"_ answered her distinct voice on the other end of the line.

"Oh thank Christ," Jane exhaled, louder than she realized she was going to. "You alright?"

 _"Jane? What's wrong?"_ Maura answered a question with a question, concern bleeding into her voice.

"I'm at your place, Maura; you know, to check on you? Well, I get here and your door's open and shit's been thrown around in the living room. There's been a break-in."

* * *

A/N: Thank you for reading and for all your kind comments! Leave me a review to let me know what you think of this chapter.


	11. Chapter 11

"Jane, who did this?" asked Maura as she walked into her home. Thankfully, she hadn't had a chance to furnish it much beyond the skeleton of the design she had planned. The sofa and chairs were upturned and a few vases broken, but no lasting damage was done, except to the tattered area rugs. Still, a dazed look overtook her features, and her hands were on her hips.

Jane approached her and wrapped one arm around her shoulders. "I dunno, Maura. I don't. But you can bet I'm going to fucking find out."

Maura stiffened, silently breathing out the worst of her anger, lest it provoke her to say something she regretted. It helped that Jane's scent, lavender and spice, acted as a calming agent. "No, the police will find out. Because we are going to call them," she said into her friend's shoulder.

Jane moved her lips to argue, but thought better of it when she saw the storm erupting in green-brown irises. "Alright. Call 'em up. But can I ask you somethin' first?"

Maura nodded as if to affirm.

"Can you please not tell them about Tommy until I have a chance to brief Frankie myself?" Jane pleaded, her face an inch from the other woman's.

"Absolutely not," Maura said despite this, despite the rush from their proximity and Jane's hand slipping from shoulder, to arm, to its own body's side.

"Please. I will tell him tomorrow. You have my word. I'll go down to the station first thing in the mornin'. I just can't let some beat cop bungle this whole thing and it end up bein' my brother's life, or my other brother's job."

Maura, though her lips were pursed in anger, seemed to consider it. "You said, at the first sign of trouble, you would notify the authorities."

"We're about to. And I'm seein' my brother first thing tomorrow. You can even come with me if you want, if you need proof," Jane said, her eyes shining with unshed tears of frustration, fear, and her own anger.

Maura felt herself too overwhelmed to stare back into them for long. She said nothing at first, only looked past her companion's shoulder to the large window that showcased BMC and its surrounding environs. The night sky could not eclipse the fondness she had for its buildings, and when she realized that the main reason she found her time there so pleasing was standing right in front of her, she provided a ghost of a nod. "Alright. We will go together. But for now, I'm calling the police."

"Of course," said Jane, stepping back, hands in her back pockets.

"Hello? Yes, I'd like to report a break-in at my condominium," Maura began her call, and stepped into the kitchen as though it would give her a modicum of privacy. She stated her address to the operator, and then they played the game of waiting. "Did you see the bedroom, too?" she finally asked Jane in an attempt to break the awkward silence.

It worked. The trauma surgeon moved from her spot across the divide of the kitchen island and leaned on the counter right next to her friend. Their thighs touched. "Yeah. Was anything taken?"

"No, at least, nothing valuable, or anything that I would notice," Maura answered. She looked at the site of their union, bit the inside of her lips as her eyes traced Jane's legs from toe to hip. _Exquisite long bones._ A low slung belt holding cell phone, keys, pager, and hospital ID served to fan the abstract flame flickering in the deep part of her mind, the baser part. All its parts, and some further south, ignited when she looked up to see Jane's face colored with concern. She cared. She hurt. She felt guilt.

"That's good. Believe me when I tell you how sorry I am. How sorry I am that you're caught up in my family mess, and you haven't even met my family," Dr. Rizzoli, in the most vulnerable state Dr. Isles had seen her, lowered her voice to a near whisper.

"It's not your fault, Jane. I just want it to go away. I want it go away so that we-" in the midst of Maura's words, two heavy knocks on the door perforated the moment. She trotted to the door and looked through the peephole to see two uniformed officers at her door.

"That was fast," Jane commented as she stepped up behind Maura and waited for her to turn the knob.

"Hello, are you Dr. Isles?" One man, head completely shaven, asked as he and his partner stepped into the entryway, both clad in all black.

"Yes, hi," Maura said, stepping aside for them. Jane did not do so, and they awkwardly shuffled past her to get to the scene of the crime.

"Hi, I'm Officer Davies, this is Officer Bustos," the bald man replied, his black mustache undulating with the vowel. He pointed to the young, tall man behind him with the buzzcut. "You wanna tell us what happened?"

At that moment, Jane stepped in. "Hi, I'm her friend, Dr. Jane Rizzoli. I actually am the one who found the apartment like this," she said as she held out her hand for them to shake. She wore her fake, professional smile and shook with a firmness the two were not used to seeing in women.

"Great," Officer Davies replied. His partner had said nothing since they walked in, only began a notetaking process as he moved about the living area. "So walk me through that."

"Well, I came up to see if Maura wanted to hang out, get some pizza or something," Jane explained, choosing her words carefully, cautious not to lie. She _had_ contemplated hanging out with the other woman for a brief moment in the elevator ride up.

"And Dr. Isles wasn't at home?" he asked.

"No, I wasn't," Maura interjected, shooting a grave expression Jane's way.

"Can I ask how you got in, Doc? Do you have a key? I saw a callbox downstairs," Officer Davies asked without looking up from his notebook.

Jane nearly scoffed at his indifference. "A guy was walkin' in the building with his key just as I happened to show up. He held the door open for me. Anyway," she growled. Maura almost pinched her. "I came up the elevator, and when I got here, the door was slightly ajar. So, I pushed in, grabbed a walking stick from the hall that Maura always leaves for when the doorbell rings, and saw the place like this. As soon as I called her to make sure she was ok, she headed over here and called you."

"How's it goin', Bustos?" Davies called over his shoulder. He did not look at Jane, and barely glanced at Maura.

"No major damage," Bustos called out as he returned from the bedroom. "Any valuables missing, Dr. Isles?"

"No, none," she called back.

"Anything missing at all?"

"Nothing."

Davies sighed. He cleared his throat as though he had prepared his next statement and rehearsed it many times. "Dr. Isles, we will definitely file the necessary paperwork and keep in touch. There have been a few break-ins in this area in the past few months, so we will let you know if we find anything. Unfortunately, with this type of crime, unless anything specific is taken or anything is left behind, we often do not catch the person who commits them."

"So… that's it, then?" Maura asked, a little incredulous. She suddenly saw a little of why Jane wanted Frankie to be the first to know about Tommy. It didn't assuage her anger, but rather split it into two: at Jane and the situation they were in, and at the seeming indifference of the police.

"Like my partner said, ma'am, we're going to do the best we can. I have some photographs and I've begun the paperwork for an investigation, but it is sadly common that we don't catch those who break and enter," Bustos cut in, clearly having learned that his traditional good looks could diffuse a situation.

Jane glowered at him, and this time, Maura really did put a hand on her wrist.

"Well, thank you for stopping by, I suppose," Maura said, barely halting herself from rolling her eyes. The officers both nodded and Bustos handed her a copy of the complaint with their phone number on it.

"We'll call you if anything comes up, Dr. Isles," he said, and with that, he and Davies left.

Jane shut the door behind them and spun on her heels. "They didn't even take fingerprints."

"Well, it is hard to procure a fingerprint specialist for these low level crimes, especially if nothing was taken," Maura started, "but I will say that their attitude bothered me."

Jane scoffed. "The people who did this, they wanted to scare you, Maura. Not take your things. They wanted to fuck with you."

"Well, I would say it worked," the shorter woman replied as she wrapped her arms around herself.

"Hey," Jane said, walking over to her friend and hugging her again. Maura still went rigid, but this time managed a pat on the back. "I know you're mad."

Maura didn't reply. She just licked her lips and looked to the side.

"You got every right to be mad, and we should talk it out," the brunette continued. "But I have to go see Tommy real quick. You want me to take you somewhere while I do that?"

Maura snapped her gaze back Jane's way. It burned. "Are you going to tip him off so he can get away?"

"What? No! I'm going to go tell him to take care of this problem now, or I'm gonna kick his ass," Jane said, incredulous that Maura would think such a thing of her.

"Al-alright. I'll be fine here, Jane. You go do what you need to do," the ENT answered, still not quite convinced. "I'm just going to start on the clean up."

Jane thought about protesting, but decided against it. "Ok," she said simply as she walked out the door.

* * *

"TOMMY!" Jane shouted as she pounded on the apartment door in front of her. She yelled for him partly in anger, partly in fear at the three strange men she had seen on her way up to the third floor.

She never forgot how the North End operated after dark, but even so, this street seemed especially busy on a weeknight at 8:30 PM. Men solicited women, men solicited men, both sold drugs and some shot up entire buildings. She knew this intimately as she was often the last stop between many of them and death. The whole block reeked of chemicals and nicotine, and she hoped that when she walked into her brother's place, that it would be the exception.

Thankfully, it was.

Tommy Rizzoli opened the door for his sister, yanking her inside by the sleeve after sparing a glance outside the door. "Sheesh, you gotta be so loud, Janie?!" He whispered as he went to the kitchen table and motioned for her to sit. She didn't, opting for grabbing him by the shirt collar and shoving him against the nearest wall, and when she noted the revolver sitting on table, as well as the one on the coffee table in the Spartan living room, it fueled her madness.

"Jesus, Tom, yeah. I gotta be loud. You know where I just came from?" She asked through clenched teeth. Too many times she had been in this position, and she nearly laughed at the irony that it was the first time she hadn't smelled alcohol on his breath. She couldn't have imagined anything worse back then, and yet here she was.

"Fuck, ow! Where?!" He shrieked, perturbed and shell-shocked. His ears rang with the force of his head hitting the wall.

"Maura's place. Maura, my coworker, my friend, the surgeon who worked on Flannery with me. It was fucking broken into!" Jane spat, throttling him some more.

He stopped resisting so much at that revelation. "Shit. Really? They take anything? They hurt her?"

"Lucky for you, she was at work when it happened. I saw the place first. _I_ walked in on the mess. Wanna know why that is?" she whispered in a false calm.

He merely waited for the rest.

"It's because I went to go check on her, make sure she was safe. BECAUSE YOUR STUPID ASS GOT HER FOLLOWED AND FUCKING BURGLARIZED!" Jane was sure any neighbor could hear, but she didn't care, and she assumed neither did they. "How are you gonna fix this shit, little brother? How?!"

"Alright, alright! Let me go!" He pleaded, a sad caricature of her previous pleas to Maura.

She did what he asked, remembering her friend's mercy. "I'm gonna tell Frankie, Tommy. I have to. I can't endanger her like this anymore."

His eyes widened, and for a moment, she saw the old Tommy ready to fight or fly the fuck away. To his credit, he did neither. "I… I wish you wouldn't. But I understand. Either way, the Irish are gonna get what's comin' to them for doing that to her."

"You gonna start a mob war with Paddy Doyle?" jane asked with incredulity.

" _I_ ain't. I'll be fightin' a case," Tommy replied with a sad smile. "But the Patriarcas will. If they have to."

"All over an asshole rapist," she commented, shaking her head and leaning it against her brother's. She refused to let tears escape, but they threatened nonetheless.

"Fuck him," Tommy said. "I'm sorry I got you involved in the first place, Sis. And listen, I'm gonna send my guys over to Maura's place, keep her safe for a couple nights."

"What guys?" Jane asked, looking into his crystal blues.

"My detail," he responded with a smug grin. "They're outside my door."

"Those three guys I saw on the way up?"

"Exactly. Look like low-lifes, right? But they're there for my protection. To look out for me until this thing blows over."

"And how exactly is givin' 'em to Maura gonna keep you safe?"

"We're kind of strapped for muscle right now, Janie, so they're the only options I got. Plus, the Irish don't even know I'm the one who sent the kid to take out Flannery. He's been catchin' all the heat. I don't even need a detail, boss just made me take 'em."

Reluctantly, Jane nodded.

"Good," Tommy said. "They'll follow you back to her place. And sis?"

"Yeah?" Jane said behind her shoulder as she headed for the door.

"Go see Ma, will ya? She won't shut up about you."

* * *

"Maura," Jane called as she knocked then entered.

"I'm in the living room, Jane," the woman answered. She popped her head up from behind the couch, and all the furniture had been put back in its proper place.

Jane whistled. "You do the bedroom already, too?"

"Yes, it was first. I wanted the place I sleep to be cleared," Maura answered, running a wrist over her damp forehead. She peeled off the rubber gloves she was using for cleaning, and set the can of Lysol down on the end table.

Jane studied her for a few seconds, attracted to the perspiration she had never seen outside of the context of exercise before. She shifted on her feet from her place in the kitchen. "Can you come here for a sec?"

Maura looked dubious, hesitated, but walked over to Jane, who stood behind the island and against the sink under the microwave. The dim lighting cast her in shadow, and her dark clothes seemed almost sinister against the deep colors of the granite countertops. Maura wondered why she trusted the woman so fully when she so often was in the shadows. "Yes?"

"I went to Tommy's," Jane started, and when she felt that Maura was not close enough for her liking, she stepped closer. Maura leaned against the counter where she had just been, and Jane circled to stand in front of her.

"Yes. And?" Maura asked with her arms crossed and her lips closed in a hard line.

"He knows I'm going to Frankie in the mornin'. He… said he understood," Jane said, herself growing a little frustrated with her friend's body language, her friend's tone.

"You don't think he'll run now that you tipped him off?" Maura asked, voice rising.

"He can't. His people will track him down, he's a liability to them," Jane explained. She turned her head at the question, as though she had trouble hearing it. "Why you want my brother caught so bad?"

"I… I don't," Maura attempted to clarify with calm. It barely worked in the face of her anger and Jane's oppressive body heat. "But I want this to be over. I don't feel safe!"

At this, Jane sobered. "I know. But hey, I went over there, and he gave me a few guys to help keep you safe. They're outside the building now, makin' sure nobody is gonna come up here that shouldn't be up here."

"No. absolutely not," Maura nearly shouted. "Ask them to leave."

"What? No!" Jane yelled back. "You said you wanted to be safe! I need you to be safe. Until the morning, this is the best way I know how!"

"I refuse to accept any help from people knowingly operating outside the law, Jane! I refuse to lower myself to associate with those types of people!" Dr. Isles growled, poking her finger into her friend's shoulder.

Jane scoffed, but the hurt had already traveled to her eyes. "Those types of people, huh?"

Maura barely felt regret for her statement, but did clarify. "I didn't mean you. Of course I meant the men outside."

"Just take the help, Maura. Please? Let me keep you safe until the mornin'," Jane begged through and upcurled lip and on a livid breath. It was a breath that passed through the both of them; they were so close.

"No. I'll call the police, tell them I don't feel safe, they'll send someone," Maura shot right back.

"Take the help, Maura!" Jane ordered, her face nearly touching the shorter woman's.

"No!" Maura shrieked. For a moment, both stood in the wake of their fight like petulant children.

"Fine! I'm staying here then! If you're not gonna let them protect you, I'll fucking do it!"

"Good!" They ceased, they froze, Jane too angry to speak anything but regrettable words, Maura in fear that the tears would finally fall.

Everything erupted when the two of them looked down to see the fronts of their bodies touching.

The kiss that Jane then laid on Maura, grasping at her waist and lifting her up onto the counter, was so sinful that she felt heavy between her legs. The frenzy of Maura's returned kiss, their lips slipping and sliding together, missing on cheeks and chins, sent blood rushing down through the both of them. The woman on the counter moaned when hands grasped at her hips, and it resonated against the walls of Jane's mouth. Hearing herself inside of Jane sent her into a tailspin.

"This is… not a good idea," she warned in between kisses, her heart in her lips as they moved against her friend's, but not in her words.

"Fuck you," said Jane, calling her bluff, dragging nails along the pants that covered her thighs.

"Please take me to the bedroom first," Maura said as her final acquiescence.

Jane was more than happy to oblige, and shoved her friend's hips toward her own. Maura took the hint: she wrapped her legs around the narrow waist between them, and her arms around the broad shoulders she so loved to look at hunched over patients. She continued to kiss all over Jane's face, reveling in the unadulterated sexuality of being carried to her bed for this specific purpose.

It was rough, the way they continued to lick and touch – the anger hadn't left them; it just channeled into their connection. Jane threw the both of them onto the bed with a _thwump_. Maura clawed at Jane's work shirt, ripping the buttons from the fabric in the process and revealing her undershirt. Jane responded in kind, making quick work of Maura's pants. Heels and boots had been kicked off somewhere in the middle of the frenzy, and so those pants fell to the floor with ease and the strength of the trauma surgeon's hand.

They were both clotheless in an instant – and Maura's hands gravitated to Jane's long torso, spread above her as Jane hovered with elbows and knees on the duvet. "I want this… on top of me," the ENT said, her voice running low and gravelly.

Jane lowered her body, so that the both of them touched, and Maura's frustration all but dissipated when she heard the surgeon's heavy sigh in her ear. It was the thing about Jane that had pulled her in from day one: the singular attention, the desire, whether platonic or not, that Jane was unafraid to show her.

They kissed again before Maura felt the brunette slide her tongue down her body. She dragged her nails up Jane's back as it slithered down her, enough to break skin when that tongue swiped through the entire length of the heat between her legs. "Jane…"

The answer was a more insistent drag, up and down. Jane dug into her hips, sped up, then slowed down when she heard Maura getting too close.

Maura shuddered when the reality of the situation hit her. Thinking about Jane's head between her thighs made her writhe in confidence and unashamed pleasure. The lamp light and the cool air hit her naked skin, skin that missed the light sweat on Jane's.

As if she read Maura's mind, Jane climbed back up to lay prostrate on her body, and just as the woman below moved to protest, she filled her with two fingers and Maura cried out. "The change…" the shorter woman managed to breathe out.

"What?" Jane asked through a pant and a kiss to her cheek, nose, mouth.

"Mmm," moaned Maura when she tasted the salty-sweet on the trauma surgeon's tongue. "The change… in… technique… it might take awhile…"

Jane pulled her head back to survey her. "You think I care?"

"I…"  
"I don't care… fuck. I don't care. I'm here all night, remember?" Jane struggled to say when her friend's leg found wet purchase in between her own.

"Don't remind me of why before we finish, just keep… oh," Maura said. She threw her head back, and she felt bites across her spread neck.

* * *

It was a long time, in a way: thirty salacious, sexual minutes and two orgasms had passed. They lay in tousled sheets and sideways across her bed, the thrust of Jane's fingers having slowed to a grind, when they heard the distinctive double-ring of the surgeon's phone and pager.

Twin sighs permeated the heated air. The otolaryngologist's hands turned soft as they roamed the back above her. "I would tell you not to answer, but I don't want you to lose your job. Why are they calling you?"

"I'm the general on call this week, but I shouldn't. I've got money saved up; I can be fired," Jane said through the distortion of lips on lips.

"You're only saying that because you're inside of me. Answer it," Maura said through a smirk, and pushed Jane's shoulders away. The taller woman grabbed her pants and picked up her phone. She raised a curious brow when they heard Maura's go off as well.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you all for the kind words about this little AU close to my heart. I really can't tell you how much I appreciate it. Continue to read and review; it fuels me!**


	12. Chapter 12

**A/N: So, I was going to post this yesterday, but apparently this website decided to flop. However, here it is now. I can't wait to hear your response, so make sure to leave a review should you feel so inclined!**

* * *

"I guess Nina wasn't sure how far out the guys were when she called," Jane said, shutting her car's passenger door when Maura's legs folded into it. "But, the attending's stabilizing, and I'm goin' in for a potential perforation."

"Really?" Maura wondered aloud. "who's the attending?"

"Crowe. He's newer. Hasn't been around in trauma long. Guessing he wanted me in to make sure things went smoothly," Jane explained, trying not to speed through the intersections knowing that Maura hated it so much.

"Ah, yes. Well, extensive facial trauma. Seems similar to the Brannon case. But he was stabbed?"

"From what they told Nina, guess so. Stabbed and beat up pretty bad. Which is why I'm guessin' Crowe didn't want to fly solo with all the new residents hangin' around," said the trauma sugeon.

"I see," replied Maura, looking out the window to the moon.

"So," Jane began after a minute or two of silence from her ride-along.

"Yes?"

"Quite a night, huh?"

"I would say that. And it doesn't look to be over any time soon."

"We uh, we gonna talk about it?"

"About what?" Maura asked, turning to look at her friend-turned-lover. Those long fingers drummed non-rhythmically against the steering wheel and all that Rizzoli energy screamed to be let out. She licked her lips at the memory of it being let out all over her.

"What we were doing when we got this call!" Jane growled, her leg bouncing to match her hands. They pulled into the hospital's front parking lot.

"We were having sex, Jane. You and I are both consenting adults, and sex is a perfectly natural part of life. Especially for people as attractive as the two of us," Maura commented as they both exited the car and powerwalked double time toward the trauma unit's locker room.

"So it didn't mean anything to you?" Jane asked, her voice a harsh whisper as they passed exhausted patients' families on their way through the lobby and down the stairs.

Maura held open the door to the locker room and opened her combination lock before answering. "I never said that. There is more to my fondness for you than my attraction to your form," she said, freshly scrubbed, watching Jane strip and hurry to do the same, "though it is quite a fine one."

Jane turned a pinkish red, and held the door open for Maura on their way out as she hopped into her surgery-appropriate shoe. They made their way to the trauma bay's desk. "Well, you've got a not so bad one yourself," she said as they approached Nina standing by the desk and the hall to the resus room.

 _Wait._

"Nina?" asked the ENT, before the brunette could. "Why aren't you in the resus room?"

The woman looked grave, near tears when she tried to answer. Instead she just shook her head. Maura saw her face, and immediately knew. She ran, as fast as she could, toward the chaos. Jane set off as well when Nina grabbed her arm, full lips quivering, but words strong: "Jane, no. That's not a good idea."

Jane pulled back as if burned. "Who?"

Nina just shook her head again.

"Who, god dammit?" she all but screamed, and other personnel began to look up at her.

"Tommy. He's alive, but-"

"Shit!" shouted the trauma surgeon, bolting away from her friend. "Shit!"

"Jane!" Nina called out, running down the hall after her.

Inside the resus room, a hurricane had struck.

Nurses moved about, hooking up her little brother to IVs, monitors, and needles. At least, to the man she was told was her brother – his face was so bloodied and his torso so bruised that he almost refused to be recognized. Residents took blood from his femoral artery, shoved a catheter up his urethra to drain his bladder and fill it again with water for the ultrasound. Doctor Crowe affixed a cervical spine stabilizer on his head and neck – a faux crown for the anti-prince he had become.

Maura shined a light in his pupils and ghosted her hands over his face. It seemed to unfold in slow motion, her touch, but in reality, Jane knew it happened at lightening speed. A trauma tech, on his way to test blood and urine, bumped into her, nearly spilling everything.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Rizzoli!" He said, nodding to her as he recovered and rushed out, and it was then that she made her decision. She approached his body, and the stench of blood made it hard to keep the contents of her stomach in check.

"What do we got?" She barked in the best impression of herself that she could muster, and Crowe immediately fired off his vitals. _Not good._ Pulse weak and thready, blood pressure falling.

Maura looked her in the eye. "You shouldn't be here, Jane." She said as she pulled her off to the side. "Your judgment could be compromised."

Jane scoffed despite the tightness in her throat. "I'm the best surgeon in this room, Maura."

"That's true," Maura said, calmly, a juxtaposition to Jane's rage. "but that's on a good day, an objective day. Tonight is the opposite of that. Don't endanger his chances because your reason is clouded."

With her eyes so clouded, Jane wondered if Maura was right, if reason wasn't too far behind. Still she had to try. "You think I'm gonna leave my brother's life in the hands of Crowe and some residents? After he's here because I took his protection?! He's here because of me, Maura!"

"That's bull and you know it, Jane. He gave it to you willingly, and he knew the consequences. You don't want to trust him to Dr. Crowe? Fine, trust him to me. He's got frontal sinus fractures, orbital fractures, and a damaged trachea, so he's going to need me more than anyone else right now-"

"Dr. Isles!" Crowe called out, perspiration forming on his bald head, "We've got fresh epistaxis here."

She ran back to Tommy to inspect. When Jane saw her face go pale, she nearly fainted. "That's CSF. Nina, I need you to start him on 20 mg of Vancomycin now!"

Nina had taken her place again as the uniting force in the resus room, and she answered the call with gusto. "20 mg starting now," she said, hooking up the proper bag and clearing the residents out of the way of the gurney.

"We need to take him to the OR now, Jane, so I need to you to leave," Maura said with authority, but kindness, sadness in her eyes.

It killed her, but Jane nodded. "Take care of my baby brother, Maura," She pleaded, a hiccup and a few tears finally escaping.

Maura kissed her cheek. "Of course," she whispered before heading out with Crowe toward the operating room.

"Nina, don't let these guys screw it up," she said as her friend walked by. "You're my eyes. My lifeline, and I'm usually the best one in there," she said, and Nina laughed through some tears of her own. "So I need you to be more than that to them."

"I'm going to do my job to the best of my ability, and you know that's head and shoulders above the rest, Jane," Nina offered quietly, her hand brushing Jane's arm.

Then she, too, disappeared around the corner.

* * *

When Maura finally spotted Jane, she sat in the waiting room, alone. Her nasojugal folds were nearly purple from lack of sleep, and five hours of waiting, of knowing she could do nothing _but_ wait for the surgery to be over, had to have been hell. "Where's your family?" she said, not knowing much else of what to do besides sit next to her and run a hand along her back in wide, sweeping circles.

"I didn't wanna call them until I knew he had pulled through. Which is what I gather you're here to tell me," Jane said, more in a sigh than in a voice.

"Yes. He did pull through. He is in the ICU now, recovering from the surgery," Maura answered. The slump in Jane's shoulders and the sob that tore through her throat filled Maura with emptiness, even though she knew they were the products of relief.

"How'd it go? How is he?" Jane asked after she had composed herself, and wiped her nose with the back of her hand.

"Dr. Crowe was… green," Maura said, "but with Nina's help, he found the bleed and closed it. I performed several facial fixations, and he now has a titanium plate to stabilize a frontal sinus fracture. Honestly, now it's a waiting game. You saw me order the first dose of antibiotics for him to prevent meningitis."

"Jesus," Jane said, slumping back into her chair. She put a hand in Maura's lap, and Maura took it in both of her own, beginning to rub at the tense joints. "He's alive."

The specialty surgeon chuckled out of sheer relief. "He's alive, yes. I can't say how he will be exactly when he emerges, but he has a tracheostomy, and my professional opinion is that he will need swallowing therapy from a speech-language pathologist. So he will be here for at least a week and a half."

Dr. Rizzoli nodded. "Guess I better call in the cavalry."

"Guess so. And Jane?" said Maura.

"Yeah?"

"This is not your fault. It never was. It was the fault of the men who did this to your brother."

"Thanks, Maura," Jane replied. She pulled her phone out from her white coat pocket, unwilling to let go of her friend's hand. Luckily, her friend did not mind the connection. "Hey Ma? Yeah, I know it's late, I'm sorry. But you and Pop need to get down here to the hospital. It's Tommy."


	13. Chapter 13

Maura watched, rapt, as the Rizzolis trickled into the waiting room where Jane received them. Frankie arrived first, as he lived in the city. He merely resembled his former self in her eyes: gone was the suit, the tie, shoes and styled hair. Instead, a mussed black wave stood up in some places on his head, and fell woefully flat in others. He wore a rumpled grey track suit and a pair of Nike running shoes, and he wept like a child when he fell into his sister's arms.

"Fuck, Janie," he croaked. "He gonna be ok?"

Jane spoke through tears as well. There were three other people in the massive waiting room, not including Maura, but still, the ENT shielded them from view to the best of her ability. "I don't know, Frankie. I don't know. But he's alive, and after what I saw of him, we have to count that as a blessing," the trauma surgeon replied, squeezing her brother tighter before releasing him.

He gulped in a huge breath, and then sighed it out. His voice remained somewhat wet, but had mostly returned to normal. "Christ? Did you work on him?"

"No, I couldn't. I couldn't see him like that, knowing…" she paused to let the wave of emotion pass. Maura waited for Jane to tell Frankie what she knew, why Tommy was in the hospital in the first place. It didn't happen. "But Maura worked on him. Put his face back together again."

Frankie turned to her when Jane said this, and she saw the gratitude build in his eyes until he grabbed her and hugged her, too. She patted his back, stiffly.

"Thank you so much, Dr. Isles," he breathed, and she felt the words enter her ear and travel down her spine. They settled in the small of her back, just above and behind where she usually felt the brunt of Jane's affections.

"Please, it's Maura," she managed. When he looked at her as though he wanted her to continue, she did, with practiced care. "Your brother is alive. He is reaching stability, though he's not there yet because a piece of his skull ruptured his dura."

"What, what does that mean, Doc? I mean, Maura," he asked, mouth slightly agape and eyes just a little Rizzoli-wild.

"It means that the sac that separates his brain from his skull was torn, and he could develop meningitis. We're giving him round the clock antibiotics to make sure that doesn't occur, but until some of that swelling goes down and he shows signs of improvement, we're going to have to depend on him putting up a fight."

"If it's anything our brother can do, it's fight," Frankie said, and Jane chuckled sorely. He laughed too, and Maura smiled at the both of them.

"You all seem very resilient. I'm sure he's no different," she responded, but the two snapped their heads at the _whoosh_ of the automatic entryway doors.

The two middle aged people who stepped through _had_ to have been Jane and Frankie's parents, even if they hadn't walked straight towards the three of them – the blood resemblance could not be denied. The man, Frank Sr., with his gelled black hair and tucked-in shirt, oozed the coolness of another time. He provided the shoulder for their mother's heaving sobs. Her brown hair was pulled back by a clip, and her patriots sweatshirt and jeans served to humanize not only herself in this moment, but her husband as well.

She decided that their combination was so much more attractive in the one person that was Jane. Their daughter hugged them with enough tears to appease her mother, and yet a composure that would not alienate her father. Frankie came up behind them and hugged the mass of bodies, and they stood that way for what seemed like twenty minutes.

"What happened to my baby, Janie?" Angela Rizzoli asked, her gaze pleading and defiant at the same time.

"He got beat up, Ma, pretty bad," Jane answered, bowing her head. Maura wanted so badly to tell them more, but decided to trust Jane.

"What? Why? Who could do this to him?" the matriarch gasped. Her two older children shared a look, but she did not catch it.

"We don't know, Ma," Frankie interjected, before Jane could speak.

"God, what is this city coming to?" Angela wailed, in Italian-American grandiosity. "Did you operate on your brother? How is he, what's happening?"

"No, I didn't. But this is Dr. Isles. My friend, Maura. She saw him through the entire process, and she did perform a few procedures for Tommy," Jane answered, stepping back to allow Maura some space.

Frank Sr., however, spoke up before the ENT had a chance to. "What? What do you mean, you didn't operate on him? We all know you're the best BMC's got and he's your own brother-"

"Frank!" Angela admonished, but Jane answered him.

"Because, Daddy, that was my little brother on that table. There was no way I could open him up. But I trust Maura's expertise more than anyone else in this hospital, and she came through in the clutch." She stared at him with a narrowed brow and a frown, willing him to let it go, even though she knew it was his way of processing. He apparently accepted her words as enough of an answer, for he drew quiet again.

"Mr. and Mrs. Rizzoli," Maura began in the composed voice she always delivered news with, but when she felt Jane close at her back, drawing comfort and energy from her, she relaxed her shoulders and decided to let their intimacy drive this particular meeting. "Tommy is alive. He suffered a lot of facial trauma, and I had to insert a few plates in order to stabilize some of his more extensive facial fractures. He also suffered damage to his voice box and windpipe, so I had to stabilize that with a tracheostomy, which is a breathing tube that he will wear for at least a week. Luckily, the damage to his breathing apparatus was relatively minor. He also suffered internal bleeding, but our trauma surgeon on call, Dr. Crowe, repaired the laceration. He is on aggressive antibiotics now, and is approaching stability, so that's a good sign. He's not out of the woods yet. But he's on his way to being so."

Angela cried through the news. "Can we see him?" she finally asked.

Maura looked to Jane, who nodded. She glanced at her watch. "Yes. Would you like me to take you all to him?"

As they all answered with some variation of yes, she led them to the elevator, Jane walking alongside her, saying nothing. Her hand swayed close to Maura's, as though she wanted to grasp it, and Maura's heart raced at the notion. She found it harder to believe as the hours moved on that this was the same woman she had had sex with, had let inside of her, not long before – Jane was tired, broken, and meek.

They ascended to the fourth floor, and she found it important to speak as the lights flickered to note the passing levels. "Now, I want you all to be very aware: Tommy does not look like himself right now. His face is swollen and wrapped in gauze, and there are drainage bags on each side of his head. He sustained multiple large bruises on his body as well."

They all nodded, but when they entered his room, Angela wailed. It was the scene that Maura had described, but so painfully worsened by the presence of her own child. She rushed to him and grabbed his hand, kissing it, muttering things no-one truly understood, and even Frank Sr. strained to keep his emotion in check when he went to the other side of his son's bed. Frankie and Jane watched the scene unfold from the foot, one dazed and with his eyes red, the other mesmerized by the sight of her prostrate brother and all his current trappings.

"I'll let you all have some time with him," Maura said into the air, not knowing if anyone heard. Nonetheless, she took her exit, and turned to walk back to the elevator when someone grasped her arm to stop her.

It was Jane. "Hey, wait," she said, stopping the both of them in the deserted hallway.

"Yes?" Maura asked.

Jane's body flickered to warmth when she saw the fall of Maura's bangs and the wrap of her bun. She sighed. "I don't know if I said this before, but thank you. I just got my first look at the work you did in there, and… just thank you. He's a mess, but I can tell you really pulled a Hail Mary out on this one," she said.

Maura gave her a small smile. "I told you that you could trust me."

"Yeah and I do. But, that… in there…" the taller woman stumbled, struggling not to cry, "it's brilliant, Maura. And I just can't thank you enough because he's my brother."

Maura stepped closer to her, so that they were only inches apart. "You've already thanked me enough," she said, pinching the front of Jane's scrubs between her thumb and forefinger. "And I was doing my job, the best way I knew how."

"Yeah, well, I know I said I was the best surgeon in the room, but that was a lie. Because clearly it's you," Jane said, sniffling and chuckling.

Maura laughed too, unveiling the dazzling white of her smile. "I won't correct you," she said, swaying a little on her feet, marveling at the purity of the brown in Jane's eyes. She kissed her then, slow and languid and deep. Three short pecks and another long kiss later, she spoke again. "Go be with your family, Dr. Rizzoli. I have to finish up the paperwork on Tommy and then I'm going to go home. I will be back to check on him first thing in the morning."

"Okay," Jane relented, licking her wet lips and laying her forehead on Maura's. "Okay."

* * *

Maura did return in the morning, as promised. Tommy was still not yet stable, and had maintained a small fever throughout the night, but some of the swelling had gone down, and that was always good news. The four other Rizzolis had kept vigil over him for what she presumed was the entirety of the six hours that she was gone, as everyone wore the same clothes, even Jane.

Angela approached her, and Maura saw just how much she looked like Jane in the light of day. "Dr. Isles, I just can't say how much I appreciate what you did for my son. Janie's been tellin' me how much of a miracle your work is, and," she sighed, holding out her hand for Maura to take. "Just thank you."

Maura shook back. "There's no need for your thanks, Mrs. Rizzoli, but I'll take it. You're welcome."

"Any idea when he'll wake up?" asked Frank Sr. from behind his wife, seated in a chair near the window.

"It will be at least a few days, if not a week," Maura answered. In him she saw even more of Jane, and this amazed her. The posture, the raven hair, the tall frame and long bones – it was as though Jane was Angela's skin wrapped around her father's skeleton, and Frankie was the opposite. Marvelous.

"I wouldn't rush it, Pop," Jane said from the chair on Tommy's side nearest the door. She rose to stand close to Maura, and Angela's eyes flickered across the both of them.

"Course not, sweetheart. Just tryin' to get some information," Frank said. He returned to sipping his coffee and checking his phone for plumbing jobs.

"Well, I'll leave you all to your days then, but know the prognosis for your son improves by the hour, especially if his swelling continues to go down," Maura said, nodding to all of them, before turning to go.

"Wait, Dr. Isles!" called Angela, and Maura turned back. "Janie says you're good friends."

"I'd say that, too, I think. Jane was one of the first people to really welcome me here," she replied, unsure where the conversation was headed. Jane seemed unsure too, so she stood behind her friend in an attempt to intimidate her mother.

Angela only smiled wider. "Since you're such good friends, I was wondering, maybe this is too much to ask. But could you keep an eye on Tommy through this whole ordeal? I don't know when he's going to be released or what his recovery time will be like, but it would make me feel so much better if I knew you were helping him through it."

Maura nodded vigorously, relieved that this was the conversation's mild outcome. Jane wasn't so sure. "Of course. Jane will give you my phone number if anything arises. I will make sure to set up a few appointments in my office after Tommy has been released, both to check the progress of his healing and to set him up with the appropriate Speech-Language Pathologist. I can also be present at the insertion of his nasogastric feeding tube today, if you'd like."

"That would be wonderful, thank you," Angela responded, starry-eyed.

Jane took her arm, and walked with her out of the room. "Hey listen," she began. "I'm sorry about my family. They can be a little… smothering."

"I think it's sweet," said Maura, a quizzical look on her features.

"Yeah well. That's because you haven't been around them very long," Jane replied. "Speaking of, actually… we're goin' out to dinner tonight. A little Italian place just a couple blocks from here. I know it's not what you're used to in terms of swank, but would you wanna come? None of us have really eaten anything and it'll be our first meal that wasn't hospital food since yesterday."

Maura wanted to be excited. Part of her was. Part of her was elated that Jane wanted her to spend time with her family. The rest of her felt heavy with the knowledge that only she, Jane, and Tommy held. "I would like to, but… I don't think I'd feel comfortable knowing something that your brother doesn't. And should."

"I get that, but I am going to tell him. Today, remember? Things just got a little hectic," Jane reasoned.

Maura nodded. That she could not deny. Still, she maintained her reserved expression. "I know. But please tell him."

"I will. I gave you my word," Jane promised.

The ENT gave a small smile, but walked away with a sadness that sprouted from her hesitation to believe her friend.

Frank Sr. and Jr. followed not far behind, turning left instead of right, toward the vending machines. Jane patted her brother's shoulder as she re-entered Tommy's room, where her mother stood waiting for her with a smirk on her face.

"You messin' around with that girl, Jane?" she asked, arms crossed and foot tapping.

"Ma!"

"What?!"

"Tommy's in critical condition and you're playin' this game?" Jane said with her arms open, confrontational.

"Yes! You could at least let me see one of my kids healthy and happy!" Angela retorted.

"Can't I be healthy and happy without seein' anyone?" Jane whined.

"Sure, and you usually are whether you're seein' someone or not. But you get a look. And I don't blame you! She's gorgeous, especially out of those scrubs."

"What look?" Jane looked around, as though the answer would be in the room with them, avoiding the _Maura is gorgeous_ comment.

Her mother didn't answer that question. "It doesn't matter, because she's comin' to dinner, isn't she?"

* * *

Maura tried not to let self-consciousness get the best of her as she trotted down the sidewalk in her heels. For she, Maura Isles, was late, for the first time in her life: Jane had texted her to be at the restaurant by 8:00, and it was now 8:03.

She wanted so badly to be on time, to impress the family of the person she had certainly come to like, and that had devolved into a serious wardrobe debate. So now, she wore dark jeans and a black ruffled blouse under a light trench coat.

Her earrings dangled and her eyes were smoky, and Jane, who stood just outside Figaro's on her phone, certainly appreciated it. "Hey, you look… you look amazing," she gushed, shoving her phone into her coat pocket. The breeze outside chilled them both, and her kiss on Maura's cheek was cold.

"Thank you," Maura said. Her voice was deep and lax, and indicative of the effect Jane's words had on her. She accepted the kiss and hugged the taller woman. "I'm sorry I'm late, by the way. Is everyone waiting on me?"

"What? No. Clearly you've never been on Italian time," Jane chuckled. "You're early. In fact, we're both early. I was gonna go in and get a table in a few minutes, but now that you're here, we can go now, I guess." As she spoke, a work truck parked on the street, and out scrambled the other three Rizzolis. "Well, would you look at that," she whistled, "one doctor that isn't me at the table and suddenly people have the courtesy to show up on time."

Maura giggled, and threaded her arm in Jane's. They stood outside the restaurant's heavy maroon door, and waited for the rest of the family to meet them. When they did, Jane rolled her eyes at the smug grin on her mother's face.

They entered, sat, and ate, the conversation undulating in the lightness of a family comfortable with one another, but burdened by a hard time. Angela and Frank seemed older, no doubt worn on by the exhaustion of a child knocking on death's door. Frankie and Jane, every few moments, would share a tired look.

Maura was content to watch, to answer cursory questions directed her way, and to revel in the feel of Jane's hand, hidden under the table on her knee.

"I just can't see why anyone would do this to Tommy," Angela said again, shaking her head.

Frankie waited for the waitress to finish setting down their dessert orders before speaking. "I don't know, Ma," he said, shaking his head in genuine wonderment. Maura's heart sank, and her hand shoved Jane's away from her knee. "But I'm gonna do my best to find out."

Jane looked as though electrocuted when Maura spurned her. She nodded toward the restroom, and the shorter woman reluctantly followed. "What the hell was that?"

"You didn't tell your brother?!" Maura nearly shouted.

"You want me to tell him while my mother's out there?! Oh yeah, 'Frankie by the way, this is all Tommy's fault because he ordered a hit gone wrong! How does that make you feel, Ma?!'"

"No! But you had all of today! I told you I don't feel comfortable keeping your secret anymore, and you said you were going to tell him today! And you didn't!"

"You know why? Because my parents have been around us since midnight! I had to fucking text him from across the room, _across the room_ , that I needed to talk to him at his place tonight! That's where I'm going from here!" Jane growled. She stood so close to Maura that the other woman could feel the heat emanating from her.

"That sounds nice, Jane, but I don't know if I believe it," Maura responded quietly, and walked away. Her heels clacked on the tile, and she had nearly crossed their table before Jane caught up.

"I'm sorry, but I've got to go," she said professionally, sweetly, to the Rizzolis still seated at the table.

"Oh, that's too bad," Angela said through a bite of her tiramisu.

"Yeah, Maura. Sure you can't stay?" Frankie asked, patting the seat next to him, the one she had occupied earlier.

"I'm quite sure, but thank your for your company. I enjoyed myself," technically it wasn't a lie; she _had_ enjoyed herself up to the point when she had realized Jane had not confessed what she knew to her brother.

"I'll walk you out," Jane said in the best nonchalant voice that she could muster, doing her best to smile in the shorter woman's direction.

"It's quite alright. Enjoy your meal. I can find my car," the cool in Maura's tone stayed with Jane for the rest of the night, though her family hardly noticed, and she didn't bother to offer Jane a grin in return.


	14. Chapter 14

Tommy had made leaps and bounds of progress in his two weeks at Boston Medical Center. Fourteen days from his introduction to the trauma bay, he was conscious, and breathing independently. This lack of use for a ventilator meant that Maura would remove his tracheostomy tube as part of her rounds.

He was the Rizzoli with which she had spent the most time in that span; Maura had really only spoken to Jane twice since the incident at the restaurant, both times to consult on a patient. It became hard to count the missed calls and unread text messages, one of each coming in as recently as the night before, and easy to ignore them. Ignoring them meant ignoring the quandary in her heart that dealt squarely with Jane.

So, she visited Tommy, checked his status, monitored his facial progress, and though his face showed signs of bruising and swelling, he all but resembled himself again. Or, rather, whom she assumed him to once have been - Jane's copycat and blue-eyed, brown-haired mirror. In a way, it comforted her to be around him, even though he couldn't speak. His long bones, his dark stare, his charm that oozed from a cellular level and that needed no voice to bewitch others, those were all Jane's traits. He missed one vital, dangerous _Jane_ component, however, and though she couldn't name it, she knew that its absence was what made her feel safe around him. She knew that he took after his sister, but was thankfully _not_ her.

This morning, with the sky overcast and drizzle threatening to return to rain, she walked into his room in flats and black pants with a blue sweater under her white coat. He sat up, eyes still bruised, and waved to her. His ventilator had been removed the night before by the attending physician, and he took frequent sips of thickened water to pacify the roughness in his throat.

"Hi, Tommy," Maura said, looking over his tracheostomy. "Does it still hurt too much to try and talk?"

He shook his head and covered the hole in the tube. "No," the word was strangled and rough, "but I can't for long."

"I can imagine," she replied. "I'm just glad that you don't have any paralysis in those vocal folds. They will be stiff for awhile." After she thrust her hands into a pair of latex gloves, a nurse walked in to monitor for emergencies. She stood close by, but far enough to give Dr. Isles her space.

Tommy nodded and smiled. "Thanks to you," he croaked, and she shook her head. She readied herself to tell him not to thank her, but before she could, she saw his eyes light up at the doorway behind her.

When she turned, Frankie stood there. "Hey Tom. Doc, you mind if I talk to my brother while you do this?" That was another thing – the few times she had seen Frankie, he reverted to calling her by her title, rather than by her first name. Clearly, work brought him in this morning, by the looks of his suit and badge on display.

"Of course, Detective," she answered.

Tommy looked between the two of them with a curled eyebrow. "You two have a thing?" He asked without shame, noting the awkwardness in the air.

Both Maura and Frankie sputtered to deny it. "Of course not," Maura said with vehemence, and Frankie shook his head profusely.

Tommy shrugged.

"Ok, little brother," the detective started, "I've talked to your lawyer, and the DA. Like I said last time, we may, _may_ be able to work somethin' out. You just gotta give up some names."

The man in the bed scowled at some far away notion. "Who?"

"The Irishmen who did this to you, and the guy who ordered the hit on Flannery," Frankie said.

Maura flushed and felt cold sweat gathering under the sleeves of her sweater. _Jane had told Frankie, after all._

Tommy made one of the few guttural noises he had learned in his time without a functioning voicebox. "You know not one of those bastards came to see me in here? Said…" he closed his eyes to banish the pain in his throat, "said I was like family. Bullshit."

Frankie sighed. "You only got one family, and we were sittin' here while ya had blood bags stapled to ya face."

Tommy nodded, but avoided his brother's gaze.

"Ok, Tommy, I'm going to remove the tube from your trachea. You may feel a pinch followed by a shortness of breath, but that's normal, ok?" Maura interjected, needing to retreat, to gather herself. She only waited for his affirmation. When he gave it, she handed him a piece of gauze. "When I remove the tube, press that on the tracheostomy, and I will tape it. Your feeding tube will be removed when we get the SLP in here to help you with some swallowing techniques, but when you speak and eventually eat, occlude the stoma with your finger as you've been doing with the tube."

"Do it, Doc," Tommy said. "I'm ready."

On the count of three, she did, and taped the gauze over the hole in his throat. "That should heal on its own, but I will continue to monitor it."

"Kay," he responded. Turning to Frankie, he said, "I'll name names. But first you gotta give me the details of the deal. And second, I have to finish up my therapy."

"I think we can do that, brother," Frankie said. "I'll tell the detective assigned to your case."

Maura excused herself from the room and sought refuge in the hall full of anonymous people. She placed the back of her wrist against her damp forehead, and decided she had somewhere she needed to be.

That place was the observation room above the operating theater. Normally, residents came up here for two reasons: to observe the best surgeons at BMC, or for a quick nap. She was not a resident, but she had indeed entered the room with the intent to observe.

Unequivocally, Jane was one of the best. And today, she performed a rather precarious procedure: the partial colectomy. The patient, in his mid sixties, had cancer, and now Jane needed to remove a sizable portion of his colon. The surgery had started as a laparoscopic one, but the surgeon found too much cancerous tissue to be removed this way; thus, she made the decision to convert to open surgery.

Maura marveled at the handiwork involved: there was mercy in everything that Jane did. She moved with ease, her concentration an extension of her, not a burden to carry; however, no incision was without singular purpose. Her brown eyes searched the body of the man supine on her table, reading it for clues, hunting for any of mass she may have missed. Hers was a deadly hand for that which afflicted her patients. Just as much as her expertise, her compassion and her thirst for excellence saved their lives.

And this is what made her so devastatingly desirable. The revelation hit Maura like a bullet, and she had to sit down. Jane operated with brilliant manipulation of the anatomy, yes, but also with honor, and service. The otolaryngologist could not say that about herself – she had integrity, and even honor, yes, but did she _serve_ her patients? That she would not feel comfortable asserting. Jane did it without hesitation. Maura operated for the thrill of science and discovery, Jane for servitude, and nothing was sexier.

Her view changed in that moment, and her want became concrete. Jane had only needed time to be true to her brother; she kept her promise. It thrilled Maura deep and low that this Jane, the one cutting away in the operating theater, was exactly the one in the outside world – just, kind, and ever her opposite.

For the second time that morning, she needed to escape for some air.

When she burst out of the observation room and into the second lobby of the hospital, she bumped into Frankie on his way out. "Hey, Dr. Isles," he said, bracing her, "you alright?"

 _Did they all have to be so noble?_ "Yes, I'm fine, thank you." She assured him.

He let her go, and was about to leave, when he turned back to face her. "You know, it might not be my place to say this, but you should talk to my sister."

"You're right," Maura replied. "I don't think it's your place," he winced at her words, but she quickly qualified her answer, "but I also agree with you. I do need to speak with her." She really needed to get a grip. Just talking about Jane elevated her pulse and flushed her skin.

"She told me everything, you know," Frankie said. "That night that you left the restaurant. I felt bad, because I had to tell her that I pretty much already knew."

Maura's eyes widened at the revelation.

"C'mon, Doc. You think I'd have made detective this young if I didn't know what I was doin'? The part about your apartment bein' broken into? That I didn't know. But my partner became lead on the case when we started to suspect Tommy. I'm just glad we might be able to get him a deal."

"And… and what is that deal?" Maura asked, still shell-shocked.

"Well, you didn't hear this from me, but he'll get immunity in exchange for the name of the guy who ordered the hit on Flannery. He'll have to go somewhere where he isn't known for awhile, but it's a lot better than 25 years in prison. Plus, I think it'll be good for him."

"Does Jane know?"

"Yeah, she knows. What she doesn't know is why you keep icin' her out. She really likes you, Maura. She hasn't liked anyone like this since this boyfriend she had in medical school," Frankie chuckled. "So talk to her, will ya?"

Maura turned red again. "I will," she managed before he put on his coat and waved goodbye. She watched the rain hit him on his walk to his car before she turned on her heels with intent.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you all for your kind words and follows. Please continue to read and review; it keeps me going! And for all who might be wondering, a 15 blade scalpel is a small instrument to make fine cuts like those required in operations on/around the voice box. Also, for those of you asking, Paddy Doyle is Maura's dad in this story, but just because I want him to be. it's not important to the story - he is related tangentially to the plot at best and is only mentioned once or twice.**


	15. Chapter 15

Jane exited the wash room with a sigh. She hadn't anticipated the amount of cancerous tissue to be removed from Mr. Clark's colon, and soon she would have to break it to his family that he would be staying for almost a week longer than they anticipated. The good news? She thought she got all of it, and so his treatment plan should have been straightforward from that point.

The colon and its parts were on her mind as she shuffled through the halls and picked up the file waiting for her on the nurses' bay just outside the O.R. She needed to report to his oncologist as soon as possible, because he would have to outline Mr. Clark's status to his wife and two grown children once she explained the procedure.

It was definitely not the sexiest train of thought she had had recently.

Nevertheless, it proved to be of no consequence what her train of thought in that moment was, because a crafty Maura Isles yanked her into the closest supply closet either way. "Ah, fuck!" she yelped as her head hit the handle of a mop, but a sloppy kiss obscured her words. "Maura, what the hell? I don't hear from you in two weeks and now you wanna jump me?" Still, she wouldn't deny that the hands on her face, the thumbs caressing her cheeks, the soft lips pressing against her own, felt good.

"You told Frankie everything," Maura breathed, nipping at Jane's lower lip before terminating the kiss.

"Yeah! That night after the restaurant! I told you I was going to!" the general surgeon said, groaning at the sensation. "You woulda known if you answered your damn phone."

"You had broken your promise before," the shorter woman said, her green eyes cloudy as they looked up into brown ones.

"No, I didn't. Things just got a little delayed because someone beat the fuck out of my brother," Jane asserted as Maura put hands on her shoulders. She shuddered at the touch.

"You had that whole day, and you kept putting it off," Maura volleyed back, even though her tone held no bite or aggression.

"Yeah, because we had to think of a more tactful way to tell our crazy-ass mother than 'hey Ma, your youngest son is a mobster and almost got both me and himself killed,'" Jane grumbled.

"It was all just so overwhelming," the ENT sighed. "I don't have siblings, and I'm not really all that close to my parents. I don't know how to navigate those communicatory waters, Jane. I didn't know that it required such finesse, and I just wanted it all to end, to feel safe."

"You coulda trusted me, but then you went off and ran, and I didn't hear from you. Why?" Jane asked, not daring to reach out for Maura lest she bolt again.

"Because… it's happened to me before," she answered. Her body tensed and her hands became rigid on Jane's chest.

The taller woman stood there, confused, until her face lit up with realization. "Ian?"

"Ian." Maura exhaled a whoosh of air, as though his name were a secret that had burdened her for far too long. "Ian told me that he was going to come back to Boston with me. We were about halfway through our assignment. I continued to ask him, to make sure that he still wanted that, and he always said yes. But, a few days before I leave, I find out through someone else that he extended his stay. I had to corner him to get him to admit it. He is staying another year."

"Well, fuck, Maura. I'm sorry," Jane said in a near-whisper. "He give you a reason?"

"He said it was his duty to the people there," Maura answered, "and I believe that's partly true. But I also know he hated America, what little he had seen of it. And he thrives on adventure."

"Well, he's a dumbass," Jane retorted with confidence, and Maura laughed.

"I think you're just saying that to make me feel better," she said.

"Hell no. You know how torn up I was thinking I had let you slip away? I still ain't sure that I'll get you. But if I do, I know I would do everything in my power to keep you. You're an adventure in and of yourself, Maura."

Maura's knees went clichedly weak, and she cursed herself for it. But, one look into Jane's face, her noble brow and high cheekbones, and she knew her words to be the truth. She shook her head in wonder that she had thought about moving on from her.

Jane chuckled. "What? You still don't believe- " she was cut off by a molten kiss. She tasted the need on Maura's tongue, and it filled her with an aggression, a desire. She practically growled when the kiss ended.

In fact, she found herself so preoccupied with Maura's hazel irises, trying to gather any sort of intel from them, that the hand down her pants nearly flatlined her. "Jesus," she croaked, when two fingers slipped past her boyshorts and ran the length of her.

Maura almost giggled at the look of confusion staring back at her. It mirrored a look of pain. "I always repay sexual favors that are as… generous as the ones you gave me that night," she explained.

"It wasn't… like I got nothing out of it," Jane managed, flashing back to her own orgasm in Maura's queen-sized bed, "Fuck… Maura, we're at work."

"It'll do us both good if you're quiet, then," the otolaryngologist purred, increasing the speed of her circles. She resisted the urge to laugh again when Jane nearly crossed her eyes and then slumped her forehead against the wall behind Maura's back.

The trauma surgeon groaned when she remembered that she had to return to work, and Maura finally chuckled openly with a hand on her lover's back.

* * *

"Hey," Jane greeted Maura days later at her office door. They had not seen each other once since their incident in the supply closet, but had exchanged texts of all kinds, both innocent and not so much. Though she had doubted it before, now she knew: Maura was definitely still _interested._ She leaned against the threshold, hands in her suit pant pockets, black oxford collar obscuring her neck, the picture of self-confidence.

Maura imagined that she looked quite like a Vampire baron in that moment, all dark clothes and wicked smile. "Rachel let you back here? I'm going to have to have a talk with her."

"I know that you're happy to see me," Jane stated, her lips pursed in a cocky upturn.

"I am indeed," Maura responded, putting her pen down and leaning back in her chair. She gave Jane full view of the skin-tight black dress she wore, and the taller woman gulped. "Now, what is it that I can do for you, Dr. Rizzoli?"

"My uh, my Mother. She says she really wants to thank you properly for all you've done for us, and uh…" Jane, who had been the paragon of self-esteem moments ago, now stumbled over her words as she thought about the hemline just feet away from her. _Don't think about the heels, Rizzoli._ Maura waited for the rest, the foot of her crossed leg moving in metronome time, making heel-ignoring near impossible. "and she's sad you had to leave so abruptly the last time we had dinner. So, she wants to know if you want to come to dinner tonight. It's Friday, so sometimes we eat together as a family at my parents place and-"

"Yes," said Maura, unable to take the rambling, endearing as it was, anymore.

"Yeah?" Jane asked with an exhale, her shoulders slumping with relief.

"Yeah," Maura returned. She got up, and crossed the way to where Jane stood. "You'll pick me up?"

The trauma surgeon nodded. "Yeah. Around six."

The ENT glanced at her watch. It was four o' clock. "Perfect. I'll see you then," she said, sidestepping Jane and leaving her alone in the office to collect herself.

* * *

The two of them stood outside Jane's parents' one story suburban home, Maura once again latched onto Jane's arm. She wore jeans, and figured a sweater would fit the less formal attire required of a home visit. The taller woman had laughed at her dilemma in the car, and told her that she would look great in a burlap sack.

Maura appreciated the sentiment, but complained that it was of no help, especially since Jane hadn't had time to change, so she came in her work clothes.

The doorbell rang on the other side, and it was Frankie who opened it. "Maura," he said, finishing up the chew of something that made the house smell divine. He hugged her, the way Jane did, long and with meaning. She hugged him back for a few seconds, and then he let her go. "It's good to see you. Ma and Pop are in there if you wanna put your coat down and head back." She didn't really, but sensed the need mounting for alone time between siblings. So, she nodded to thank him, and walked into the home.

Jane entered the hall so that she could close the door to the outside fall chill, but the two remained there. She peeked over her brother's shoulder, and then looked at him. "No Tommy?" she asked.

"No. We got the deal worked out. But, in order for him to get protection, he has to leave Boston. He's goin' out to California later tonight," Frankie said, hands on his hips.

Jane accepted the news with sadness, but also with relief. "Ma know?"

"Yeah. She got to say goodbye to him. They don't normally do that, you know," He said.

"Well, I'm glad they made an exception. Are they setting him up with rehab services out there?"

"Yeah, believe it or not. He goes to the SLP in a few days somewhere out in LA. But shh, because I'm not supposed to know that."

"Your secret's safe with me, brother," Jane winked. "Now let's get in there. I think we've left Maura to the wolves long enough."

Sure enough, they walked past the staggered pictures of themselves as children on the walls, past the living room where their father sat on the same couch he had for the past 15 years. He flipped between Red Sox playoff pregame shows and waved to them, and found Maura stirring some pot while their mother pulled pasta out of boiling water.

"Ma, she's been here two minutes and you already got her on kitchen duty?" Jane griped, taking the spoon from Maura and replacing her.

"Well it wasn't like any of my kids were around to do the job! And Maura asked if there was anything she could do to help!" Angela shot right back as she drained the noodles in a colander over the sink. The kitchen's theme in their old home had been roosters, and now it was Sicilian citrus. Jane thought it perfect for the sour taste of these little back-and-forths.

"She was bein' polite!" she said, stirring with more vigor as each word rose in pitch.

"Oh, I don't mind, Jane," Maura interjected, unable to stop the rumble of laughter from escaping her throat.

"See, Janie, she don't mind! Now get the _cuddura_ and the silverware out, and you and your brother can set the table," Angela retorted, pointing to the long, thin loaf of bread on the counter. Frankie grabbed it while Jane grabbed the plates and cutlery, and mouthed _I'm sorry_ to her friend.

Maura rolled her eyes as they left.

"You see how my children treat me?" Angela asked with no seriousness. She tossed the drained pasta into a serving bowl that resembled a sink both in color and sheer size.

"I can see that they love you very much," Maura said quietly. She smiled at the Rizzoli matriarch, continuing to stir what smelled like a meat sauce. It had been the aromatic culprit for the air in the house when she walked in.

"Eh, I can too. But they take themselves so seriously all the time, it's fun to rattle their cages a little bit," the older woman laughed. "Go join them, Maura. I'm about ready for that sauce."

Maura did as told, and bowed out of the kitchen, into the adjacent dining room. There, brother and sister laid out the table, as though they were young children again, and she felt a tinge of sadness that she had never known such a thing.

"You want to help me lay these out?" Frankie asked, holding up spoons as he placed forks.

She nodded, and took them from him. "You know, I've never done anything like this."

"Set the table?" he asked in confusion, and Jane kicked at him from the side.

Maura laughed easily enough, however, and shook her head. "Of course not. I've set tables much larger than this one. But that's also exactly what I mean – I don't think I've ever had a family dinner this intimate. My parents rarely ate at home, and we didn't live very close to any of their relatives."

Frankie made sure to give her all of his attention, with his hands on his hips and his front unguarded. She appreciated him for that. Jane listened, too, but in her own way, leaning against the table with her arms across her chest – signaling to others that her attention was Maura's only. Closed for business. She started to see _why_ they loved Angela and Frank so much: if her parents had taught her how to be this way, sincere and kind, she might have loved them as fiercely Jane and Frankie did their own.

"Ok, is everyone ready?!" Angela called from around the corner, emerging with a bowl of pasta and a bowl of leafy greens, one in each hand.

"I'm starvin'," Frankie declared, taking a seat next to his mother, who sat at the head of the table. Frank took a spot at the other end, and Jane sat next to him. Maura sat next to her on Angela's other side.

Frankie heaped some food onto Mrs. Rizzoli's plate, then onto his own, and then passed the bowl to Maura, who thanked him.

"What're they sayin', Pop?" Jane asked her father, who shook his head.

"That we're down 2 to 1 and we'll never recover and blah blah blah, usual doom and gloom stuff from the national networks," Frank said, waving his hand as if to banish the thought.

"Agh," Jane scoffed. "I hate the Fox broadcasts. We start in a half hour?"

"Yeah," the usually stoic man laughed at his daughter. "You think your mother's gonna excuse you that fast?"

"I sure as hell am not, Janie, Maura's _your_ friend. You are not going to leave the table to watch sports," Angela snapped, pointing a menacing fork in Jane's direction.

"Ma, I'm an adult," Jane deadpanned.

"How 'bout you, Maura? You like baseball?" Frank smiled at her, the dazzling crooked smile Jane wore so often.

"Oh, I don't know," Maura replied too quickly and with more than a little rose in her cheeks. "Jane has introduced me, and it's exciting. But there's too much I don't understand."

"There's lots of rules," Frank assured her before a hefty bite of pasta.

Jane shook her head at him, but Maura was the one who spoke. "Oh no, the rules are simple enough. I actually like that part of the game. But there is so much nuance and unspoken etiquette that I don't think I could ever catch up enough to truly understand it."

"Yeah, Pop. I told her we were gonna watch a game one night and then she showed up with the rulebook. Memorized," said Jane.

"Well, damn, that's impressive," her father laughed.

"You got a photographic memory, Maura?" Frankie asked, passing her the _cuddura._

"Yes, actually, I do," Maura replied. She took her knife and started to cut away at the hard crust.

Three sets of eyes immediately focused on her, but only one set of hands reached out, one she recognized from their prowess in the operating theater.

"Uh-uh," Jane corrected, taking Maura's hands with her own and ripping a chunk of the bread from the loaf. "Just like that."

"Thank you," she whispered into the trauma surgeon's ear. She felt the muscles of Jane's face retract in a grin.

* * *

"Hey."

Jane stood on her parents' back porch, studying the sky when she heard the greeting. She turned, and saw Maura bathed in the light of the house, clicking the sliding glass door shut behind her. "Hi."

"Why aren't you wearing a jacket? It's frigid out here," the ENT complained, rubbing her arms vigorously in her own coat. Jane wore only her work oxford and slacks.

"Superstition. Sox are down 3 to nothing in the fifth, so I need a temp change."

"That sounds… extreme."

"Maybe so, but I'll do whatever it takes. You need somethin'?" Jane asked, turning back to look up at the stars.

"Remember when we went up to the observatory together?" Maura asked, walking out the edge of the porch and joining her.

"Yup. That was fun," Jane offered, stealing a glance at the moon on Maura's flawless face. She staved off the desire to touch as she saw light dancing across full lips and a slender nose.

"You wanted me, even then," Maura said, without a chuckle. Her brow twitched, her only sign of humor.

Jane latched onto it to save her from her mortification. "I… I guess that's true."

"Listen, Jane. I… I want to be with you," admitted the shorter woman, not moving her gaze from its place on the bluish black expanse in front of them. "I thought about it a lot tonight." They stood still for what seemed like forever, when Jane took Maura's hand in her own.

"Needed to test drive the family before you commit?" chided Jane, and before Maura could backtrack, she continued with a smile. "I don't blame you."

* * *

 **A/N: After this, it's just the epilogue! Thanks to all of you who have stuck around with this story and who have shared your opinions with me. It means a lot.**


	16. Epilogue

"Mikey!" Jane yelled as she trudged into Maruccio's front door. The little bell rung, but the owner was nowhere to be seen. She yanked the scarf from around her mouth lest it had occluded the full power of her voice the first time.

However, before she could bellow out his name again, Mikey appeared from the back. "Dr. Rizzoli! You haven't been around in awhile!"

She made a face. "Tell me about it. I've been told I need to eat healthier and that turkey sandwiches don't count," she scoffed.

"A little sandwich never killed anyone," Mikey said, "but a lot of sandwich?" he pointed to his round belly, and the two of them shared a laugh. "What can I get you?"

"Gimme my usual, and a… veggie," she coughed out the last part so as to be near unintelligible.

"What was that last thing?" Mikey asked, looking up from his pad and pen to her face.

"And a veggie," she winced as it came out.

He raised his brow. "You know the last time someone ordered a veggie in here? 2011. Only reason it's still on the menu is because my Ma insists it be there for our vegetarian neighbors. Do they ever come by the shop? No."

"I know, I know. It's sacrilege to the meats. Just gimme the damn sandwich, Mikey," Jane growled.

"Alright, alright. Anything else?" he acquiesced, holding up his hands.

"Uh, yeah, you guys carry hummus?" she asked, again with an infusion of timidity.

"What the hell is hummus?" Mikey asked, confusion etched all over his face.

"Just forget it. Light on the dressing for the veggie, ok?" she said, handed him a twenty, and then sat down to wait.

* * *

"Uh-uh, Dr. Isles, you come here," Nina Holiday curled her finger at Maura as the doctor passed through the trauma wing on her way to pick up some paperwork.

Maura looked genuinely puzzled. "Did something happen? Am I needed on a consult?"

"What? No! I haven't seen you in what feels like forever!" the trauma nurse corrected, walking over to her so they could find a semi-quiet corner.

"Well, I supposed a few weeks is awhile," Maura said, the warmth of Nina's hand on her shoulder a welcome disruption of her routine.

"It has been a month at least. And I've heard from a very reputable source that you are dating a strapping young trauma surgeon on the come up," the nurse winked.

"Jane has told you about us," Maura stated with a blush.

"Painfully too little," Nina qualified. "So that is where you come in."

"I'm sorry?" the ENT asked, again unsure what exactly the conversation was about.

"Now, I consider myself a straight woman," there was a pause, "but sexual preference is not a hindrance in finding Jane Rizzoli attractive."

"I think I'd be inclined to agree, but maybe I'm biased."

"Maybe, but you've got to tell me. How is it?"

"How's what?"

Nina didn't answer but opened her eyes wide and looked downward.

"Oh… oh! You mean the sex," said Maura matter-of-factly.

Nina nearly choked on her transparency. "Yes, that," she replied as she looked around for eavesdroppers. "How is that… aspect of your relationship? Is it as… athletic as it looks like it would be? Because _girl_."

This was the moment Maura had wondered about since her return to Boston, and especially since she started dating Jane – how much to share? Her filter was artificial at best, and Jane hated to talk about the particulars of sex. She supposed she could share that. "Well, Jane is very much a doer, not a sayer." As Nina was about to respond however, she cursed. "Dammit! I'm sorry, but this all reminds me that I promised her I would meet her for lunch. I have to go!"

"Wait, what? You're not getting off the hook that easy, Maura! I have rounds to make, but we _will_ be discussing this over drinks! If not tonight, tomorrow!"

Maura giggled as she searched frantically for her ID card. "Of course, of course," she assented, "call me and we'll go. But I really do have to be off; she'll kill me if I show up too late." She found her ID, and hugged Nina goodbye.

"Oh, and Maura?"

"Yes?"

"Tell Jane that the two of you are disgustingly happy. You need to tone it down," the nurse rolled her eyes with a smile.

Maura smiled back. "I'll make sure she gets your message," she said, and then jogged toward the elevator.

* * *

"I'm sorry I'm late! I got caught up talking to Nina."

Jane watched in amusement as a winded Maura took the seat across from her. "It's alright. I ordered what you asked," she explained, pushing the tray with the veggie sandwich on it toward her.

"Thank you," Maura responded, and scooted in her chair. Jane smirked at the way she separated each white corner of the sandwich paper, flattened it, and then straightened her food before picking the left slice for her first bite.

"No problem. What'd Nina want?" she asked as she tore through the middle of her own paper and rolled it away from her sandwich like the foil of a burrito.

"You may not want to hear this, but she wanted details about our sex life."

Jane choked before regaining the ability to swallow. "Excuse me?"

"I didn't tell her any specifics," Maura assured her, "though she somehow guessed that you are athletic in bed. She's very astute."

"Yeah, a real smarty, that one," Jane griped. "I can't believe she asked about that!"

"Can you really not believe it?" Maura asked. The taller woman shrugged in agreement with the point. "I can promise you I didn't tell her anything. But we are meeting for drinks tonight."

"Great."

"Oh! And she wanted me to give you a message," the ENT said, remembering Nina's words.

"And?"

"She said that we were disgustingly happy and that we need to tone it down," Maura said, unable to get through it without chuckling. _Happy indeed._

"Well Maura, you said it yourself. She's very astute," Jane said, giving her lunch mate a wink.

* * *

 **A/N: Thank you for all your reading and reviewing. It was a fun ride. AUs are a lot of work! LOL. It was all worth it, though. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, don't hesitate to let me know! Until next time.**


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